The Little Ghost Boy
by Extant
Summary: Began as a fusion of DP and The Little Mermaid, but has totally wandered off into original plot. AU, obviously. DxS. Ch. 9 - DANNY FINALLY MEETS SAM! Sorry for the wait. All the cards are in play and it's full swing from here. ;
1. A Fine Day for Sailing

**A/N:** OMG, you guys! I can't _believe_ I'm writing this!!! I _never_ write fusion AU! And I can't believe I've already written _this much_! I've been fighting with writer's block for almost a year, even when I had the plot written out in detail. Anyone following Foothold knows I've turned to drawing instead. I always got hung up on the words. And now this comes _spilling_ out of me!

This story is a result of me reading a DP/Little Mermaid fusion someone started, but only did a couple chapters of. It's been floating around in my head for a few weeks now, and then suddenly last night, BAM!, all of this hit me. Which characters I'm putting in which roles though are very different. That author had Danny in Eric's role and Sam in Ariel's, which I'm switching, as well as others. You'll see. :D

This chapter's a little long, but I hope you like it. I'm twisting this _so_ much! (Cackles.)

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Danny Phantom or The Little Mermaid. Just my very strange mind, which decided to come up with this.

**Chapter One: A Fine Day for Sailing**

On the deck of the _Triton_, Lady Madeline stood at the railing of the quarter deck, the wheel creaking under the heavy, calloused hands of the helmsman behind her as the ship bobbed and sank beneath her feet, the wind whipping her skirt around her ankles. From her position, she looked out over the ocean, her eyes following the white wake they left behind them as they cut through the water. Overhead, seagulls followed the ship, cawing with dissonant cries as they swooped and swerved through fading mist that burned a drab gold in the late morning sun. Here and there, the sunlight streamed through breaks in the clouds, falling onto the surface of the ocean where it lay like trembling flakes of silver, and Madeline quickly closed her eyes, pushing back the rush of homesickness that swelled in her breast at the sight, so like the shimmering of a Threshold shining just beneath the surface.

Normally Madeline avoided the ocean like a plague. Even her room back at the castle faced away from the sea. When she dined in the hall, with its great windows looking out across the open horizon, she walked in with her head down and sat with her back to it. She couldn't bear the sight. Many thought it was from fear of the ocean, because of how she had been found eighteen years before.

Eighteen years almost to the day. By this same ship.

The _Triton_ had been sailing with a company of the ship's crew dressed in their finest uniforms, the royal family, and much of the court. The decks had been swathed in white chiffon embroidered with gold and lace and purple silk, the color of Amity Kingdom's royal family. The ship had been out for the newborn princess's baptism. It was something that should have taken place in the royal cathedral; but there was a faction within the city that had been threatening the king's life, and so the ceremony had taken place out on open waters, with no public announcement.

The infant girl had just been blessed by the priest, and held up to be presented to the court when a sailor from the nest above had cried, "Man overboard!" Everyone had risen to their feet in confusion. There had been no cry, no splash. Who had fallen? they had asked each other in confusion.

But it was not a sailor nor a member of the court who the lookout had spotted in the water. It had been her, floating unconscious and half drowned. They had feared her already dead, but sent out a sailor on a lifeboat as the court members and royal family watched on from the rails. When the sailor had reached her, he had pulled her naked body into the boat (scandalizing most of the court – she remembered the whispers that had gone on for weeks), only to cry up to them, "She's breathing!" He had quickly rowed back, and the lifeboat had been hoisted back on board where they had wrapped her in silk pulled off the impromptu altar, and quickly turned the ship back for land.

Or so she had been told. She hadn't woken up for days. And didn't speak for weeks after.

She let them think it was fear that kept her away from the water. It was better than the truth: that she was the queen of a people they feared as much as death itself. The queen of the dead, exiled to life.

No, she had no fear of the ocean. Sometimes she still longed to walk into its depths until her breath failed her and the water finally took her. Sometimes she thought it might be the only way home. There had even been nights, especially those first few years, when in the darkest hour she had walked to the shore and stood with the waves rushing over her feet, the ocean pulling the sand out from beneath her as it receded, as if enticing her to come into its cold embrace. Only her uncertainty that it would work, the idea of dying and never getting home at all, would make her eventually turn around and go back to land.

Because she was not an old soul. She had not come into the ghost zone as a woman who had died with unfinished business. Those who had were those with souls too twisted by regret, obsession, anger, or grief to pass on – ghosts like Skulker, Nocturn, and Walker, whose obsessions had formed the very shape and appearance of their souls. No, they were of a different type. But she, like her husband, like her daughter and son, had been the soul of an infant who had died at birth or shortly after, and, unfinished by any experience of life, did not pass on but was instead reborn and grew up in the Ghost Zone.

She hadn't known in those first years whether her exile to a human form and banishment to the world of the living, her longing for her family and for home, was enough to constitute unfinished business. So many humans died wanting a loved one, longing for some place or time in their past, but they did not become ghosts. In thinking about the ones who had, Madeline thought that to pass into the Ghost Zone, one would have to be so obsessed that one's soul was too deformed to pass over whatever Threshold lay between life and the hereon. Skulker, the Box Ghost, Ember – all the ghosts she could think of who had died after infanthood, they were… insane. Even in her worst moments of grief, that was something Madeline knew she was not. And even if she were to allow herself to become so, just so she could pass into the Ghost Zone, how could she return to her family then, so twisted and deformed that she might never comprehend she had ever regained them at all?

And so she had never gone through with it. It had been years since she had stood at the edge of the ocean, contemplating death. Because now, some eighteen years later, she was even more certain that it wouldn't work. Not because she didn't still long for her family just as strongly, but because now there were things that held her to the world of the living too. One thing. One little girl.

_Who is not so little anymore,_ she thought, with a completely different heartache.

A meaty hand laid itself on her arm, and Madeline opened her eyes and glanced up in surprise to find the captain looking down at her in concern. "Are you alright, m'Lady?" he asked. His voice was gruff from years of yelling orders over the wind, but warm. "You look a might queasy."

She smiled at him, weakly, but enough to be convincing. "Yes, thank you, captain" she assured him. "I'm fine."

"If m'Lady has need of it, my cabin is at your disposal. There are books there, and," he whispered conspiratorially and winked, "a bit of rum stashed in the bottom drawer. It might help…" he hesitated uncertainly, obviously trying to be sensitive, "if the sea is too much for you."

Madeline smiled genuinely this time, touched by the man's concern. "Thank you, but I think it's passed. I'll be alright now."

"As y'like, m'Lady," the captain said, and, bowing a little, stepped back and turned to walk down the stairs to the main deck.

Madeline looked down to the main deck below. The level was swarming with sailors about their duties, the wooden floor thrumming with their footsteps as they ran between stations to keep up with the healthy northeast wind. Others were scaling the tall masts that disappeared into the mists, their knees hooked around the ladder rungs as they grabbed ropes and leaned back, trying to pull taught the sails that billowed and snapped in the wind.

Running amongst them, taking orders and tying down the boons like the lowest deckman, was Princess Samantha, and by the look of exhilaration on her face she was loving every minute of it.

When the sailors had first found Madeline, there had been nothing to inform them of her identity. Without clothing, she could have been royalty or a peasant for all they knew, and they were inclined to assume the latter. After she had awoken, she had told them nothing, immediately realizing that they would kill her, if they didn't think her insane. But it became apparent to everyone attending her that a peasant she was not: her bearing, even in her grief, bespoke of experienced authority and her mannerisms were too refined not to be some level of nobility. She had been presented to the queen, who had come to the same conclusion, and although Madeline had remained silent, the queen had made her a lady-in-waiting. Madeline had been too grief-stricken to care that she had now been made a servant to a woman of her own station, and after she had begun to emerge from her grief, what she had been in her former life didn't seem to matter. For all intents and purposes, who she once had been didn't exist anymore. It couldn't.

Things went on like this for weeks, until one day Madeline had gone to the queen's chambers as directed, only to find the queen not yet there. The infant princess, however, was, having just woken from her nap and squalling. Madeline had been furious – the first thing she had felt besides grief in more than an month – that Samantha's nursemaid was nowhere in sight, and had rushed to the little girl, gathering her in her arms and murmuring to her. The baby had fallen silent almost immediately, gazing up at her with startling lavender eyes, and Madeline had sat rocking her, aching for her own daughter, only two, and her own infant son, only a few months older than the girl she held now.

That was how the queen and her ladies had found her when they finally entered, her quiet words to Samantha the first they had ever heard her speak, and smiling softly even as tears ran down her cheeks.

There was no doubt that Samantha had become Madeline's lifeline after that. Samantha couldn't replace the children she had left behind, but the love she had for the baby girl on her own was it's own comfort. And it was obvious that Madeline was Samantha's favorite caretaker. As soon as the princess had been weaned of her wet nurse, Madeline had been made her nanny – technically a step down in rank, but it had made everyone happy. As Madeline had come to accept that she would be in this land for the foreseeable future, she had begun to educate herself, reading every book she could get her hands on about the history of this realm and the kingdom of Amity, asking the court scribes and advisors for advice when she needed it (though it wasn't often – politics really were the same wherever you went). And so it was that by the time Samantha was ready for schooling, it was noted that the Lady Madeline had an uncanny understanding of politics, and was made Samantha's governor as well as instructor in comportment, in addition to the time the girl would spent being taught by the kings advisors.

And while Queen Pamela and King Jeremy had been busy with running the kingdom, she had become the closest thing the girl knew to a real mother, too.

_But I won't be her mother much longer,_ Madeline thought sadly. It was the princess's eighteenth birthday. Though the formal celebrations wouldn't be till later in the week, Samantha had come of age, and her parents were eager arrange a marriage for her and to make an alliance.

Madeline could understand, truly. If she had never been exiled, she supposed she would be doing the same for her daughter and son. She didn't think that the king and queen loved Samantha less than she did herself; but having lost her own children, she couldn't understand how they could be so blasé about something that would take her away from them – and from Madeline – forever.

And while she didn't think they would ever purposely put her in a marriage that would make her miserable, Madeline doubted that they knew enough about their daughter to put her in a marriage that would make her happy.

But she had no input on the matter. The time in which Madeline had any influence on the young woman's life whatsoever was quickly coming to a close. Rumors – which she had strictly kept from Samantha – said that a match had already been agreed upon, and would be announced at her birthday celebration.

So Lady Madeline had arranged this day especially for her, for her last week of true freedom. The few times she had been required to accompany the royal family on their sailings, she had noticed the girl's rapture. She had always managed to slip away from Madeline and her parents, and would run to the prow, relishing as the wind ripped her hair from its careful arrangements. She would watch the sailors at their work with fascination, pestering them with questions when she could, and her eyes would follow the men that climbed the masts with an expression between awe and envy. When Madeline had accompanied them again only a few months prior, Samantha had been reserved and quiet, as was appropriate, but Madeline had seen her eyes watching the sailors' every move, could see the girl itching beneath her cool façade to run the decks, and Madeline had guessed that her fascination had not waned.

Watching Samantha now, she knew she was right. A sheen of sweat shone across the girl's forehead despite the still-cool morning, tendrils of ebony hair spilled over her shoulders from where they escaped their pinnings, and the sleeves of the old purple blouse she'd dawned for the day were shoved up almost indecently past her elbows. Her black skirt had already caught on a nail and ripped, and her black corset was covered in dust and dirt; but the girl seemed not to notice. She was laughing, and when the captain said something to tease her, she replied smartly back.

That was why Madeline was so worried about the rumors of a marriage having been already arranged. Samantha rode her horse like this, practiced her archery like this, fenced with her trainer like this, even studied politics and war like this – not submissively like a princess, simply for the sake of appearance, but as a prince would, with the intensity of someone who would be expected to lead men into battle. And she embraced what most humans found dark, what they shoved away into the deepest recesses of their minds: death itself. Not in the way that Madeline longed to embrace it, but as a companion, a friend almost, who raced her, challenging her to be her best before the immortal spirit caught up. Others looked upon death as a final disease to be avoided; Samantha looked upon death as she would one of her father's advisors. It was something that bound Madeline's heart to the girl fiercely.

Samantha was around her parents rarely enough that she managed to remain demur with them, as was expected of her, and Madeline feared that the image the princess put forth for them was the girl they thought they were getting ready to marry off, not this passionate, fiery young woman who could be more than the leader they had always hoped for in the son they had never been able to conceive.

Madeline's mind flitted, and she wondered what kind of man her own son had become. In their kingdom, his coming of age wouldn't be on his birthday, but rather when he had finished his basic education under his father's advisors. There would be a ceremony to recognize his accomplishment, and to present him to all as the crown prince, indicating that he was ready to begin taking on duties in the ruling of the kingdom – an apprenticeship of sorts as his education continued. That ceremony must be taking place soon. _Or perhaps_, she thought with a pang of remorse, _it's already happened._ And her own daughter must certainly be married by now…

That was assuming her family still held form at all. She had never been able to warn them of the warlock's intentions…

Madeline shook her head, banishing the thought. There was nothing she could do, no way to know what had transpired since she'd been sent from the Ghost Zone, and it was no use letting herself sink into dark 'what ifs.' Besides, this was to be Samantha's day, and she would remain cheerful for her, if for no other reason.

Madeline gathered her blue skirts in her hand and pulled her black shawl around her as she lightly descended the stairs, making her way to where the captain was showing Samantha how to tie a special knot for the rigging. "Aye, girl!" he was saying as she approached. "This may be poor weather to some, but it's the perfect weather for sailing! A fine wind and a following sea. The Ghost King must be in a friendly-type mood."

Madeline felt as if her stomach had dropped through the very deck, and she was almost pitched forward with the next lurch of the ship.

"The Ghost King?" Samantha asked in rapt fascination.

"Why, ruler of the dead, girl! Thought every good sailor knew about him!" The captain teased, grinning. "There are entrances to his realm, Thresholds they're called, hidden all throughout these waters, and he controls the oceans to keep 'em concealed, either stilling the winds so no ships can sail, or bringing down storms to destroy ships before they find them. There's even some Thresholds near the surface, and when a ship don't come back, it's because the Ghost King took 'em! Saw it myself once, when I was just a deckman, well before you were born."

Recovering herself, Madeline wasn't sure whether to be irritated or laugh. _We only brought a storm down once, when King Jeremy had sent a fleet right toward one of the surface Thresholds! Yes, they lost a ship when it fell into the Ghost Zone, but we certainly didn't __take__ it, and we steered the rest to safety! _But here was a sailor's legend, blaming them for every still day or drop of rain or captain who couldn't read a map.

"The Ghost King," she huffed, feigning repugnance as she came up to them. "Sam, don't pay attention to this nautical nonsense."

"But it ain't nonsense!" chimed in an elderly sailor sitting on a barrel with a broom in his gnarled hand. "It's the truth! I saw it with my own two eyes I did, that ship that went down. Went down in a whirlpool of green light, it did. I'm tellin' ya, down in the depths of the ocean they live!"

"Tell me more," Samantha said, entranced. The elderly man smartly held out his broom to her. "Young arms for an old tale," he bribed. The princess grabbed the broom and started sweeping where he pointed. "I was a lad yet, only been sailin' for 'bout four years then…" the old man started. Madeline rolled her eyes and walked away. She knew from experience that once Samantha had set her mind on something, nothing would dissuade her. And what could it hurt? They were only sailors' stories after all, full of impossibilities, fancy, and contradictions. By the end of them, she was more likely to be convinced that the Ghost Zone didn't exist at all. So much the better. Let the old man talk.

But Madeline didn't want to be where she could hear it.

**A/N:** If you're confused, Maddie is in Grimsby's role. But imagine that Grimsby is instead a woman who is also Ariel's missing mother, who was also turned human. Still confused? PM me.

And I promise there will be a _lot_ less back story next time. I essentially set it up here. I know it was long, but if I didn't put it here things were going to start out confusing and get worse _really_ fast.

I love reviews! Please tell me what you think. :D


	2. Empty Thrones

**A/N:** There's an illustration for chapter one! Check it out at:

http:// daermi. deviantart. Com /art / The-Little-Ghostboy-Chpt-1-138828956

[remove the spaces]

And before you all start screaming at me that it looks nothing like Sam, go check out my character sheet for Sam in the same gallery. There's an rough example of Sam rendered in my style as she would be on the show, and how I would draw her as an adult. All I changed was her hair, and she looks radically different!

I don't know if I'll get to do any other illustrations for this story, and it looks like I'll probably have to start writing Foothold instead of drawing it, because my biofutures professor has suggested I take an idea I had for a sci-fi graphic novel and run with it for my final project as an example of biopower (biological politics) in literature! And, honestly, who would write a research paper when you can do part of a novel instead? :D Wish me luck! I still have to get final approval before I go ahead with it, but I figure I better start working on it now. I can write an 8-page final paper in a week if I have to, but drawing takes time.

**Chapter Two: Empty Thrones**

From all over the ghost zone they came: streaks of silver that shot through the milky green ever-twilight. The powerful, the weak, the ancient, the newly arrived, some of them solitary, and some in droves, all converging on a single location: the palace of the Ghost King.

Like it was carved from emerald, the palace rose from a floating island of stone, scintillating in the light of ectofire lanterns that glowed in every window and lit the way to the great doors. Innumerable spires and turrets rose from every corner and parapet, seeming to race each other for height, drawing one's eyes ever upward to the topmost towers which seemed to pin the very sky in place.

Security was tight, the ghosts noticed. For every lantern that hovered along the approach to the palace, there seemed to be a guard, imposing in their armor and full regalia, and the ghosts knew the pikes in their hands and blades that hung from their belts were not just there for ceremony.

Through the behemoth doorway the ghosts dove, like silvery moths into an open lantern. In a stream, they ascended, flying up over the useless Grand Staircase and through the doors of the throne room that lay at the top.

The great room was almost as wide as it was long, with massive gothic arches that soared above the gathering crowd. Beneath them, the floor was inlaid with an intricate arabesque of silver in jet. The front of the room was taken up by a black marble dais with several steps that led from the central aisle up to four thrones that sat at the top, two greater thrones flanked by two smaller ones, one of which was new. The wall behind them was draped in black silk, and behind the two great thrones hung shields: above the king's, a shield of orange and black, and above the queen's, a shield of blue and silver, each bearing their family's herald. Between them, and somewhat higher placed, hung a third shield of black and silver, with insignias from each of the shields below – the new herald that had been created upon the king and queen's marriage and coronation. In the domed space above the crowd hung a massive chandelier, but although the room was lit, the chandelier was not. Rather, the light seemed to be some quality of the air. The stone columns, the tile, even the light itself seemed to hang in some suspension of time, perfect in their condition, and yet seeming not quite real at all, not quite extant the way that stone or tile or light should be – deterioration, cracks, wavering, shadow.

Through the doors of the throne room, the court trumpeters filed in and separated, taking position along either side of the aisle, and there was a scurry in the air as late-comers scrambled to find and drop into the last remaining seats. Raising instruments carved from bone, the musicians sounded a bugle announcing the arrival of the court herald. From the entryway, the herald drifted upwards, almost to the ceiling, his voice rising to the arches before falling over the audience. "His Majesty, King Jack Phantom!"

To a royal refrain, the tall, pudgy king glided through the doors, dressed in mandarin colored silk robes with a black cape that rippled out behind him as he soared over the crowd and up to the chandelier, shooting an ectoplasmic ray from his scepter as he passed beneath it. The energy was caught in the crystals, and the chandelier bathed the room in light, a spray of sparks coruscating down over the audience before shimmering out above the ghosts' upturned eyes. To applause, King Phantom descended, settling into his throne on the dais with a comfortable authority that seemed at odds with his jolly figure.

"Her royal highness, Crown Princess Jasmine!"

In a black gown embroidered with silver, Jasmine entered, floating aloofly down the center aisle with a crown in her hands. But as she approached the dais, she gave her father a reassuring smile. She landed and curtsied deeply before her father, as etiquette required, then rose, placed the crown she carried on the queen's cushion, and took her own throne to the left of the queen's.

Her mother's throne would remain empty tonight, as it had for the last eighteen years.

Tradition stated that as the oldest child, and acting in her mother's place in assisting her father in the ruling of the kingdom, she should be sitting in the queen's throne to show that she represented the queen's will in matters. But Jasmine hadn't been able to bring herself to take her mother's place, even for the sake of ceremony, and she thought it would break her father's heart if she ever did. To take her mother's throne, even symbolically, seemed to be an admission that her mother was really gone. It had been an unspoken mutual agreement between herself and her father that she would never sit there, and when the smaller throne had appeared beside her mother's, she had understood without a word of explanation from her father that this throne was hers.

And tonight, to his father's right, Daniel would take his.

She wished she didn't have to keep up appearances. She would have liked to cross her fingers.

She had always felt the burden of her mother's absence. It hung over the castle like a dank silence that filled the moments that should have been filled by her voice or laughter, and put a haunted gleam in her father's eyes. Sometimes, in difficult moments, during meetings with his advisors or an audience with a member of the court, her father would fall silent, and she knew he was trying to imagine what her mother would have said in the situation.

Jasmine had set herself to take some of the burden from her father, and had studied diligently, taking her own throne almost two years early. By tradition, as the crown princess, she should have married, forging an alliance with an outlying kingdom or with one of the great families within their own. But Daniel had only been fourteen then, still four years from being coronated crown prince, and when she had declared that she would not marry, but remain as her mother's representative, she had seen her father's silent relief and no one had questioned her decision.

Even now, four years later, though her brother would finally be crowned, Jasmine had no intentions of departing for a marriage. She loved the daily challenge of running the kingdom, the politics, the economics, the upholding of the law and of order, and working beside her father. She couldn't imagine leaving to become a figure on some man's arm. She loved this land too much to step down. And her brother… just didn't seem to have the desire to rule, when it came down to it.

Not that he didn't apply himself to studying history, politics, and economics, all the things a future king should know. He just wasn't interested in the history, politics, or economics of _here_.

It was something her father knew peripherally. It had gotten her brother in trouble on more than one occasion. But she had never explained to her father just how deep her brother's fascination with the other world went. She didn't think her father would understand. Not when she couldn't either.

"And presenting the distinguished governor to the royal children, Sir Lancer!" the herald cried.

Floating through the doorway came a bald, goateed man, thin except for the heavy belly that drooped from his middle. Pale blue linen robes hung over his rotund form, with a mismatched gray plaid sash fastened with a buckle at the shoulder. With as much dignity as he could muster (and he thought he pulled it off rather well), Lancer bobbed down the aisle and bowed dramatically before the king, his naked scalp shining in the light from the chandelier above.

"Rise," King Phantom bid, "and join me." Lancer stood and came to hover at the king's right arm. In a lower tone, the king spoke, "Finally, the day is here! My son will take his throne. I want to thank you for your service over the years. I saw Daniel received very high scores in his tactical and swordsmanship."

"Yes, yes," Lancer replied. "He is an excellent fighter." _If only he would show up to his history lessons once in a while, _the governor thought to himself. _He only barely passed that._

The bugles sounded again, and the herald proclaimed, "All rise for his highness, Prince Daniel!"

The trumpeters sounded a triumphant phrase, and there was a shuffle as the crowd rose from their seats, the king and princess included, looking to the door in anticipation where the prince…

…didn't enter.

The musicians' refrain stuttered and died in confusion, and the herald cleared his throat to try again. "His highness, Prince Daniel!" he shouted louder. The instruments sounded again… but no one appeared.

The herald dropped from the ceiling and ducked through the throne room doors as the crowd erupted in whispers. What was going on? Where was the prince? they hissed to each other. Presently, the herald reappeared in the doorway and hesitated there nervously. The king glared at him for an explanation, and the poor herald shrugged helplessly, trying not to wince.

Jasmine clutched the arms of her throne with white knuckles to keep herself from burying her face in her hands.

Her brother wasn't there.

Jack rose into the air, his fists clenched in anger, and his voice shook the very recesses of the great room. "DANIEL PHANTOM!"

**A/N: **Please review!


	3. Discoveries

**A/N: **Finally, a chapter with Danny and Tucker in it! :D

I decided to update sooner than planned because I'm so many chapters ahead! This chapter feels kinda thin and rushed to me – tell me what you think.

* * *

**Chapter Three: Discoveries**

In a silver tunic and black pants, his formal robes long forgotten in his room, Daniel soared through the chill air of the Ghost Zone. Faster and faster he flew, pushing himself as the rocky terrain slipped by beneath him. He closed his green eyes and lifted his face, letting the speed of his flight blow his white hair from his brow.

But it didn't work. It never did. He could never fly fast enough or hard enough or long enough for it to ever feel like the wind did in the other realm. The air in the Ghost Zone simply didn't move. Even the cold wasn't the same. Out there, the cool air bit and nipped and caressed and whispered. Here, he only felt the silent, apathetic cold of death.

But that would change soon enough. Excitement bubbling in him, Daniel opened his eyes and did a back flip, changing directions and gliding downward. He landed lightly on the barren ground, crouching behind an outcropping of stone and looking over it in exhilaration.

"Danny, man! Wait for me!" a voice called out behind him.

Daniel rolled his eyes and looked over his shoulder. "Tuck, hurry up!" he beckoned.

The dark-skinned ghostboy came flying up behind him, panting and wobbling from exhaustion, and he seemed barely able to hold himself up in the air. He landed heavily, almost barreling into Daniel, and pushed himself up on his knees, brushing the dust off his mustard tunic and olive pants. "Ugh, you know I can't fly that fast!"

But Daniel didn't hear him, his attention already once more on what lay in front of them. "There it is," he whispered, his voice a mix of reverence and boyish anticipation. Tucker crawled up beside him and peered over the rock.

Some fifty feet off and a few feet above the ground hung a Threshold, its spinning event horizon glowing brilliantly in the dim light. Through the green vortex, they could faintly see what might have been sunlight flickering through water. Since he'd been a boy, Danny had flown over half the kingdom, Tucker thought, trying to find every Threshold he could, with Tucker, who had been Daniel's friend since his father had been hired to work in the palace, often by his side. The prince had thought they had found them all, the permanent ones and the ones that shifted in and out of existence alike. It had been more than a year since he had found a new one, and yet here was one they had never seen before, closer to the palace than some, and it looked stable.

The two young men had explored dozens over the years – well, Tucker corrected himself, Danny had explored and he had reluctantly tagged along, unable to dissuade his friend from his dangerous sense of curiosity, but too loyal to leave him to it alone. Considering the pack strapped across Daniel's chest, he had a bad feeling it was going to be another one of those times.

"Isn't it fantastic?" Danny asked, his eyes shining with delight.

"Yeah, sure," Tucker replied nervously. "It's great. Now let's get out of here," Tucker said, getting to his feet and starting to fly off.

Daniel grabbed Tucker's ankle and pulled him back down. "You're not getting cold feet now, are you?"

Tucker looked at his friend in confusion. Cold feet? He was a ghost. His feet were always cold. That was, when he had feet.

Daniel shook his head, realizing his friend didn't understand the human expression. "I mean you're scared," the young man smirked, and took off, heading for the glowing vortex.

Tucker rose into the air and flew after him hesitantly. "Who me? No way. It's just, uh, it looks damp in there, yeah… and, uh, I think I might be coming down with something. Yeah, I've got this cough," Tucker said, and hacked for effect.

Daniel reached the event horizon and hovered in front of it, gazing into it with exhilaration. He spared his friend a glance over his shoulder. "Alright, I'm going in. You can just stay here and watch for Skulker."

Relief flooded over Tucker as his friend slipped through the Threshold, and he turned to stand guard. "Okay, you go, I'll wat-" Tucker's eyes went wide as he realized what Daniel had said. "What?! SKULKER! Danny, wait!" Without thinking, Tucker dove through the Threshold behind his friend –

And crashed into him on the other side, bowling them both forwards. He clung to Danny's shoulders, glancing behind him at the Threshold fearfully. "Do you really think Skulker's back there?" Tucker asked tremulously.

Daniel laughed. "Tuck, you really are a spook."

"Am not! I-"

Daniel cut him off, his voice brimming with triumph. "Tucker, _look._"

Tucker stopped and for the first time took in the scene where they had emerged. Immediately, he saw why Danny had stopped short just in front of the Threshold: it was a underwater graveyard. For almost as far as their eyes could see, the sea floor was littered with the strewn remains of ships. Streams of sunlight revealed rotting masts jutting upward like crosses in a cemetery, silently watching over wooden railings and planks half buried in the sands. And here and there, the most complete human structures the young men had ever seen up close, were the ships themselves. Most of them lay in halves and thirds, jagged cross sections that exposed the decks within. But two or three looked whole.

"There must be dozens!" Tucker whispered in awe.

"It must have been a sea battle that sent them all down here," Daniel remarked, then exclaimed to Tucker, "They must be filled with stuff! Come on!"

Daniel immediately took off for the closest ship, his lithe form streaking through the water, and with a resigned sigh Tucker followed, phasing himself intangible so he wouldn't have to fly against the current.

There were times, especially when he was in the living world, that Tucker swore Daniel almost forgot he was ghost. The prince was fluttering around the side of the ship looking for an opening, giving the other man time to catch up. Finally finding an unblocked porthole, Daniel slid through. Tucker opted to phase through the ship wall beside him.

The interior of the ship was dark, and Daniel held up a ball of ectoenergy, casting the room in an eery green light. Loose beams hung from the ceiling, their iron fastenings long since turned to rust. Grains of sand skittered across the floor in the current and piled in the corners of the room. From beneath an overturned table, the rounded end of what might have been a bone gleamed like ivory, and Tucker suppressed a shudder. He was dead, and this place was giving _him_ creeps.

But Daniel was only fascinated. He pushed off the floor and skimmed through a doorway. Tucker followed in him into a larger room, the two men drifting around as they explored.

Tucker looked about him warily. _Yeah,_ he tried to convince himself, _this is great. I mean, I really love this. Excitement, adventure, danger lurking around every- _He gave a glance back in the direction he was floating – and found himself eye-to-eye with a skeleton slumped against the wall. "AAAAAHHHH!!!" Tucker screamed, shooting backwards and bumping into Daniel, sending them both crashing to the floor. The decaying wood crumbled beneath them on impact, and with a startled cry they plummeted into the room below, Daniel breaking Tucker's fall as they hit the deck.

Tucker winced as he rose off his friend's back, preparing himself for whatever jibe Daniel was about to spear him with about a ghost being scared of a corpse. But when he looked down, Daniel's eyes weren't on him at all: they were locked on something across the room.

"Oh my gosh," he breathed. "Oh my _gosh_!"

Tucker looked up and saw what Daniel had spotted: beneath a shattered window, a dagger stood upright where the tip of its blade had buried itself in a heap of fallen wood. Daniel shot over to the weapon and examined it, grinning at his find. The handle gleamed gold in the murky light, ornate and somehow still clean after however many years it had spent down in these depths. With a little effort, he pulled it free and examined the hilt. The gold was engraved with spirals, each end of the crossguard was inlaid with a deep red jewel, and in the center of the crossguard where it intersected the hilt, elaborate coils and loops rose from a flat surface. Daniel ran his thumb over them.

"It's beautiful," Tucker admired, forgetting his fear and coming closer.

"I think these are letters," Daniel told him, showing him the emblem in the center. "But if it spells anything, I can't read it."

"May I?" Tucker asked, holding out his hand. Danny handed the blade to him and Tucker let it rest in his palm, weighing it expertly. Tucker was a weakling – he couldn't even shoot an ectoray, and could never hold his ground in sparring; but what Tucker couldn't do with his form he more than made up for with his mind. His real passion was the crafting of weapons, and the prince knew that no one else's opinion on the blade would be better. He watched as Tucker phased himself and the blade intangible so as to test its balance and movement without the resistance of the water. He swung it around expertly before straightening and becoming tangible again. "It's perfect," he said in wonder. "I mean, it's not powerful, just an ordinary human weapon. But except for your father's blades, I don't think I've ever seen a dagger this well made."

"Wait…" Daniel said, and bent down. "There's something else here…" He pushed aside the soggy beams to reveal the glint that had caught his eye: there in the dirt lay a gold disk. Daniel picked it up, revealing it to be attached to a thick gold chain that had been hidden by the muck. He rubbed the disk on his leg, wiping the grime from the image pressed on its surface, and held it up for Tucker to see too.

From the bottom, tongues of flame rose, curling and licking up the sides, reaching up to a circle surrounding by rays at the top. And in the center, the feathers of its tail consumed by the fire, was a bird with head raised and wings spread, as if it were trying to escape its searing demise.

"What is it?" Tucker asked.

"I don't know," Daniel answered, fingering the disk in fascination, "but I bet Clockwork will."

Tucker handed Daniel back the dagger. The prince dropped the items in his pack, and the two men took off to see what else they could find.

* * *

An intricate compass, a collapsing tube with glass at either end, a half-used candle, and two soggy books, most of their letters long since washed away, had been added to Daniel's bag before he finally gave in to Tucker's pleas and they headed back for the Threshold. Tucker went through before him, and Daniel let himself cast one last look over his shoulder at the graveyard. They had explored for hours, and had probably only covered a tenth of the ruins. He would definitely have to come back here on his own.

Plunging through the Threshold, he emerged on the other side dripping and startled, as he always was on his returns, by the sudden absence of the ocean's pressure around him. He shook his head as he adjusted, phasing the water off his body and pack, and floated over to Tucker. "Let's go find-"

"Shh!" Tucker hissed, and Daniel noticed the other man's stiff posture, his eyes glazed as he listened intensely. "Did you hear something?"

Daniel listened for a moment, glancing at the terrain around them, but all was still. "I don't hear anything," he said, and grabbed Tucker's shoulder encouragingly. "Let's get going-"

BAAM!

A streak of electric green energy shot past them by a hair's breath, and both of them flew backwards in shock, hitting the ground with a jarring thud. Daniel recovered almost immediately, picking his head up to look at the charred ground mere feet from where they lay. He looked upward in alarm, and froze. Floating high above them, a tight grin on his metallic features, was Skulker. "Oh, speak of the devil," Daniel groaned, and he seized Tucker's arm, trying to pull the dazed man up with him. "Come on, Tuck, we've gotta _move!_"

"What…?" Tucker began, but gasped, his eyes wide as he spotted the hunter above them. In an instant, he was up at Danny's side and the two men shot off.

"Your pelt will adorn my bed, royal whelp!" Skulker bellowed and dove after them, ectoplasmic rays spewing from his wrist.

Daniel and Tucker swerved, flying apart and coming back together as they dodged Skulker's shots. Rolling onto his back so that he was flying backwards, Danny fired several pulses of his own. Most hit, but they seemed to do little other scar Skulker's armor. "Dammit!" he shouted. "We have to lose him!"

"Follow me!" Tucker turned sharply, and Daniel after him. In the distance and growing close fast, he could see where the rocky landscape came to an abrupt stop, as if they were flying to the edge of the Ghost Zone itself. The prince hardly had time to wonder where his friend was leading him before Tucker grabbed his wrist and took them both over the edge.

Daniel found himself falling into a yawning canyon, and he risked a look up. Above, Skulker, obviously not expecting that move, skidded to a halt and turned down to follow them. Below, the canyon floor was quickly rising, and Tucker let go of his wrist, letting him pull up moments before they would have hit. The men skimmed over the ground, Skulker's shots ricocheting off the walls around them. Daniel glanced over his shoulder in time to see Skulker launch a small cannon at them, and he grabbed Tucker and made a blind turn up the canyon wall.

They escaped the explosion below, but Daniel's shoulder hit an outcropping of rock, dislodging the pack from his shoulder, and it tumbled onto a shelf some twenty feet below. _No!_ he thought.

Tucker caught the look of distress on his friend's face and looked down. The bag was halfway between them and Skulker. He could feel Daniel tense beside him, and tried to grab his shirt. "No. No, Danny! You're crazy!"

But Daniel had already slipped his grasp, turning down into a mad dive for the lost pack. Skulker smirked and blasted upwards, already aiming for the prince. He fired just as Daniel grabbed the bag and turned into an upwards swoop, the flare missing him by a breath.

Enraged, Skulker followed. "Come _on!_" Daniel hollered to Tucker as he flew past him, and Tucker didn't need to be told twice. They raced for the lip of the canyon and rocketed out of it, tracing their flight back to where they had come from.

"The Threshold!" Daniel shouted breathlessly. "If we can get into it, he won't follow. Then we can find another one to come back in through!"

Tucker opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off as a green ray struck him from behind, knocking him from the air.

"Tuck!" Daniel cried, turning back to where his friend had fallen. Ahead, Skulker was laughing victoriously as he approached the fallen ghost. Daniel put on a burst of speed, landing and placing himself between Tucker and the hunter.

"You will _not_ touch him," he growled coldly.

Skulker snickered. "If I knew that was all it took to make you come to _me_, I would have shot the boy ages ago."

Rage burned in Daniel's chest. "Turn around, Skulker," he said carefully, "and leave."

"Ha!" the ghost huffed. "I do not pledge allegiance to your father. My orders do not come from you."

Daniel's mind raced as he tried to capture what struck him about Skulker's words. _My orders do not come from you._

But they must come from somewhere, Daniel realized in horror, if Skulker was taking orders at all. Which meant Skulker was working for someone. He was not a rogue ghost, as they had always thought.

"Who are you working for?" he demanded. "Who?!"

"That, whelp," Skulker replied as he raised his armed wrist, "is something you'll never know."

Daniel sucked in a shuddering breath as Skulker's weapon whined to life and began to glow. "No. Begone!" he cried. "Begone!!! BEGOOOOOOOONNNNNNEEEEE!!!"

It was as if all the rage and fear in his chest erupted from his throat. Daniel watched with a strange detachment as waves of energy emanated from his mouth, striking the hunter and throwing him across the ground. The sound continued until he was out of breath, and as the echos faded he stood trembling and gasping for air.

More than a dozen feet from where he had once stood, a mangled arm dangling uselessly from its wires and one eye dark and sightless, Skulker scrambled to his feet, his expression no longer one of confident arrogance, but of fear. Wordlessly, the armored ghost backed away under the prince's glare, then turned and shot off into the sky.

As soon as he was out of sight, Daniel collapsed to his knees, coughing. Behind him, he heard Tucker shift. "You okay?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Yeah. Man," Tucker grunted as he pushed himself up, "you never told me you could do that! How long have you known?"

"I didn't," Daniel replied hoarsely.

"It's a new power?"

"I… I think so," he replied shakily.

Tucker rose and went to his friend's side. "We should get you home," he said as he helped Daniel to his feet. Daniel leaned on him as he got up, but then gently pushed him away.

"No," Daniel answered, determined. "I still want to go see Clockwork," he told Tucker, already rising into the air. "I don't know when I'll get another free afternoon." The prince took off, but at a much slower pace this time, and his friend sighed and drifted after him.

_One of these days_, Tucker thought_, his obsession is going to get us rekilled._

* * *

Unseen by either Daniel or Tucker, two ectopuses hung far above the scene, their tentacles slithering as they watched the happenings below. Set in a socket of each one sat a magical, glowing eye, which acted as a single pair for the dark ghost deep within his hidden cavern who watched their combined vision in a shimmering ball of ectoplasm.

"Yes," Vladimir whispered to the image as he watched the prince fly off, his fangs gleaming wetly as he sneered. "You're safe now, boy, but your father's crown was mine, and you should have been _my_ son. Your foolish mother didn't know what was good for her, or you. It was unfortunate she wouldn't see sense and had to be sent away. Perhaps if she hadn't, this day wouldn't be _eighteen years_ in the making. Well, your ghostly wail has emerged, just as my spells predicted. It's almost time. Whether you join me or not, young Daniel, you will be your father's demise."

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A/N:

I _love_ how the Vlad-Jack-Maddie-Danny plot is fusing so well with the Ursula-Triton-Ariel plot! It just fits!

In case anyone is confused at this point (in order of appearance):

Maddie = Grimsby

Sam = Eric

Jack = Triton

Jasmine = all of Ariel's sisters

Lancer = Sebastian

Danny = Ariel

Tucker = Flounder

Clockwork = Scuttle

Skulker = the shark

The two Ectopuses = Ursula's two eels, Flotsam and Jetsam

Vlad = Ursula

The only character I've omitted from the fusion is Eric's dog Max, which I realize I could have fused with Cujo, but he'd get in the way later, so I'm leaving him out.

Please review!


	4. The Hidden Tower

**A/N:** Hey, everyone!

So this chapter is a little different. A couple reviewers commented that sticking too closely to the dialogue from "The Little Mermaid" was making it too predictable and disrupted the darker, more dramatic atmosphere I've been going for. I kind of agree. But at the same time I know a lot of you are having fun being surprised by just how fitting the lines from TLM are for the DP characters, so I'm not totally sure which way to go. I know that after Danny turns human, the story is going to pretty much diverge from the TLM plotline anyways, so I thought I'd go ahead and do this chapter with only a couple quotes from TLM and see how you guys like it.

Let me know what you think!

Thank you SO much to everyone who has reviewed! Your feedback has been great, especially those of you who went into what you liked and what you didn't. Fudge for all! XD

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**Chapter Four: The Hidden Tower**

Clockwork's tower lay in an expanse of the Ghost Zone which, while Tucker knew it wasn't far on a map (or wouldn't be, if the tower were on any map of the kingdom at all), always seemed remote when they were traveling to it. Perhaps, he thought looking around him, it was because it was always uncertain to him whether they would reach it at all. Other than the Reborn, like himself, Daniel, and their families, most ghosts preferred to live a solitary existence. But the Ghost Zone was populated enough that one could stand almost anywhere, look about him, and see several lairs dotting the airscape in every direction.

Clockwork's lair was a different story. If one flew high over the space where it should be and looked down, there would be no tower below at all, though one would be surrounded by the various doors and islands of other ghosts that served as the landmarks that one was in the right location. Only if you turned downward after a certain door and kept diving would the tower suddenly come into view – and the doorways and islands above would disappear. It was as though Clockwork had pulled a corner of the Ghost Zone over his strange abode.

And Tucker was not entirely sure that the time ghost hadn't. Out of curiosity, about four years ago, Tucker had once tried to find Clockwork's lair without Daniel. He hadn't had any intention of bothering the ghost, but had simply wanted to see if he could find the tower that was always mysteriously not there, then there, then not. Though he had known he was in the right place, and was sure he had made the turn downward at the right door, he had ended up flying in circles, hopelessly unable to find any trace of the tower at all.

Daniel always thought it had been pure luck that day seven years ago when the two eleven-year-olds, still giddy from escaping the palace grounds for the third time, had been chasing each other through the Ghost Zone and happened to discover the turn that took them to Clockwork's lair. Tucker wasn't sure that luck had anything to do with it. Although Tucker couldn't fault the ghost for Daniel's fascination with the living realm – the prince had been captivated by anything about it for as long as Tucker had known him – he could blame Clockwork for feeding it.

Clockwork was a ghost that seemed to have a foot in both worlds at once. He lived in the Ghost Zone, but worked in the world of the living. He dealt in all things human: human time, human history, human life, and the prince had been enthralled by him immediately. Clockwork had seemed to be taken with Daniel even before they met, and had since spent long hours mesmerizing the boy with stories of the other world.

Since failing to find the ghost's tower on his own, Tucker had surreptitiously learned from conversation around the palace that though the time ghost was a well-known figure, he was mysterious. No one had seen him in public since Jack and Madeline's coronation, and though there had once been talk of consulting him on a matter, no one could remember where his lair was supposed to be.

Though he never voiced it, Tucker suspected Clockwork's doors lay open to the prince alone.

And he didn't like it.

A little ways ahead of him, Daniel passed the landmark door and with a twirl let himself drop into free fall for the sheer rush of it. Tucker bolted after him, afraid that if he hesitated the invisible passage would close behind his friend. The two men plummeted, and Tucker clenched his jaw against the sudden nausea that always rose in his throat as each moment seemed to slow almost to a stop, hanging like honey slowly sliding from a spoon, then rushing over him, roiling, like whitewater, as though he were passing though different currents of time. Tucker watched his friend in envy: if Daniel were experiencing any of this, it didn't seem to bother him at all.

And then, as if they had rounded a corner all the while falling straight, the tower suddenly loomed below them. They pulled themselves back into flight, spiraling down around the tallest spire before landing in front of the two heavy wooden doors.

As it had always been since their first visit, the right door stood ajar, beckoning them.

Casually, Daniel pushed the door open and strolled in, Tucker trailing him somewhat more cautiously and closing the door behind them. Across the foyer, through a double archway, a vast hall could be seen bathed in shifting light, and they approached.

"Clockwork?" Daniel called into the room, and stepped in, looking around for the ghost. From every wall, at every height, hung enormous lenses upon which played scenes of the living realm, their colors dancing across the floor like moving stained glass. A few of the images looked familiar to them, like something they would see in the Ghost Zone, yet with living people instead. Others, however, made no sense at all: humans sitting inside the bellies of metal animals, buildings that might have been made of crystal, a filthy man covering his palm in paste and pressing it against the wall of a cave. Between the lenses and high above them, colossal gears shifted and spun, and their ticks and klonks reverberated throughout the room.

"Ah, Daniel," came an old voice from a corner, and the two peered around a gear set in the floor to find an elderly Clockwork standing before a lens, looking over his shoulder at them. He immediately shifted to an infant. "And Tucker." The babe waved his arms over his head, and all of the images were replaced by green sworls. The lenses were, Tucker assumed, a type of Threshold of their own.

The time ghost glided over to them with a warm smile. "You're late," he chided teasingly.

It disturbed Tucker, but Daniel took it as a matter of course that Clockwork knew when they were planning to come. "Sorry," Daniel replied, "we ran into some trouble."

"Yes, I know," Clockwork said as he shifted to an adult and drifted past them to a table.

"…You do?" Tucker asked.

"Of course. What master of time would I be if I didn't know when you were going to come?"

"But then…" Daniel smirked, "aren't we actually on time?"

"Yes in one time; in another, no," Clockwork answered. "In which time do you speak?"

Daniel opened his mouth to reply, but frowned in confusion, unable to wrap his head around the metaphysical implications that unfolded in the question. "Never mind, I'm not even gonna try."

"So, what happened?" Clockwork asked as they took seats around the table.

"We ran into Skulker," the prince answered. "He chased us, almost got Tuck, but… I think I've developed a new power."

"What did you do?"

"I was yelling at him to leave, and… I don't know, it just happened. It was like my voice became tangible. It hit him and he flew away." He looked up at Clockwork in confusion, who had again become an old man. "I've never been able to beat him before. We've just gotten lucky that we escaped."

"Well, this time you got lucky that another power was ready to emerge." Clockwork observed the prince's face. "But the new power is not what is bothering you."

"No," Daniel acquiesced. "Skulker… he said his orders didn't come from me. But that makes it sound like he's taking orders from _someone_ _else_. Which, if that's true, means that all the times that Skulker tried to catch me, tried to capture my sister and kill my father, it was because someone wanted it. Skulker wasn't acting alone. He only admitted it because he thought he had me. And there's no way to tell if any attempts other ghosts have made might be connected."

"Kings always have enemies, Daniel."

"Yes, but we always thought they were lone ghosts with power obsessions, or grudges. What is that human saying you told me last week? Where there's smoke…"

"There's fire," Clockwork finished.

"You're saying you think they might be organized?" Tucker asked, catching on to where Daniel was headed.

"It's possible."

The three fell silent, Daniel and Tucker brooding and Clockwork observant. Daniel's eyes rose to the lenses as he tried to fit pieces together in his mind, and a thought struck him.

"Clockwork, do you know who Skulker is working for? I mean, could you see?"

"I only observe human affairs, Daniel," the ghost reminded him patiently as he shifted into an adult. "I can't tell you. Now," Clockwork said more jovially, pulling the two young men from their contemplations, "let's see what you've brought."

The prince grinned and slung the bag onto the table, letting the contents slide out. The books, dagger, compass, tube, disk, and candle scattered across the tabletop. Clockwork picked up the compass, eyeing it thoughtfully. "Well, this one is very nice. Much like the one you already have, but finer made, more accurate."

Daniel's brow furrowed. "I tried using the other one, the way you told me, but I couldn't get it to work. In the palace, it just kept spinning, and when I tried it other places, it either spun or wouldn't move at all."

"Oh, they won't work in the Ghost Zone," Clockwork explained, and handed the compass back to the prince. "They only work in the other world. Next time you cross the Threshold, take this with you, _then_ give it a try."

Daniel took the device as Clockwork picked up one of the books and flipped through it. The pages were brittle from years in the salt water, and crackled under the ghost's touch. "Ah!" he proclaimed, his countenance turning into an infant's and brightening. "Here! The ink has not been completely washed away." Daniel practically leapt from his seat and darted to look over Clockwork's shoulder – a strange sight to Tucker, who had sat in classes with Daniel and had only ever seen him dart _away_ from a book.

"What does it say?" Daniel almost begged.

"It's a log of the ship's voyages, probably kept by the captain. Places they went. Things they did. The man's hand isn't very good, you might have trouble reading it, but you should try to decipher the words. There will be new ones in there, I'm sure."

Daniel took the book almost reverently, which would have had Tucker snickering if it didn't make him so worried.

"Do you know what this is?" Daniel asked, picking up the gold disk and handing it to the baby. Clockwork shifted pensively into an adult as he examined it, the chain dangling between his fingers. "It's a king's medallion, a symbol of the royal family."

"What? How can you tell?"

"Many humans cannot read, so pictures are used instead. Animals, plants, and objects are all given meanings that will be commonly known or easily guessed. This here at the top," he pointed, "is an familiar depiction of the sun, a symbol for authority and glory – the king. And this bird is a phoenix, the symbol for his family."

"A bird being burned to death doesn't seem like a very good image for a ruler," Tucker commented dryly.

Clockwork laughed. "No, no, a phoenix is not a _real_ bird. It is a magical bird, a mythical creature said to live for hundreds of years. Then, when it is old, it lights itself on fire, and from the flames a young phoenix emerges. It is a symbol of rebirth and resurrection."

"But humans aren't reborn," said Daniel.

"You were," said the time master, laying the medallion on the table.

"I think being reborn in the Ghost Zone still counts as _dead,_" Daniel countered.

Clockwork smiled to himself and picked up the dagger. "And you found this with the medallion?"

"Yeah. The letters in the center, they're too ornate for me to read. Can you tell what it says?"

"They're initials: M. R. F." He held it out to the prince. "You should keep this with you."

"Why?" Daniel asked, taking it. "It won't do anything to a ghost."

"No, but it was likely the king's as well. He went out with his men, met the enemy himself, and died defending his kingdom, as the greatest king should. Keep it on your belt to remind yourself. And," the ghost added, transforming into an old man, "you should wear this." He picked up the medallion and dropped the chain around Daniel's neck. "The phoenix fits you," he told the young man almost affectionately. Daniel held the pendant in his palm, gazing down at it with a newfound respect. "It is a symbol of responsibility and authority, and it is as good as a crown."

_Crown…_The word hit Daniel between the eyes, and he went pale.

"Crown!" Daniel groaned. "Oh, the coronation! My father's going to _rekill_ me!" he cried, stuffing the medallion into his shirt and hastily shoving his found items back in the sack.

Tucker jumped up in alarm. "The coronation was _today_?!"

"I'm sorry!" Daniel exclaimed to Clockwork as he buckled the bag closed. "I gotta go!" He grabbed Tucker's arm and pulled him toward the door, calling over his shoulder, "Thanks, Clockwork!"

The front door slammed, and Clockwork leaned back in seat with a chuckle before his expression darkened, timelines and parallel histories twisting around each other in his mind. There was still nothing certain. There never was. Time was not the linear phenomenon that other ghosts and humans perceived. All moments had to be kept in balance together. If there was going to be the greatest chance for success, there was still much work to be done. And quickly, before Daniel realized the trap time had laid for him.

Rising into the air, Clockwork lifted his hands, and the lenses came to life.

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**A/N:** So, there's the less-quotey chapter. What do you think? Like it? No? Let me know. :D


	5. Admonitions and Revelations

**A/N:** Physics in the Ghost Zone are very inconsistant. Sometimes things float (like the anniversary present in "Prisoners of Love") and sometimes they fall unless powered by a propulsion system that keeps them in the air (like every time the Specter Speeder crashes). Most of the time, real world items and people seem to act under the same laws as they would on Earth; therefore, for the purposes of this story, I'm assuming that there _is_ some measure of gravity in the Ghost Zone.

Also, an apology to everyone who finds the quotes boring. I wrote this chapter before everyone encouraged me to not use them. I replaced a few, but many I couldn't take out without changing the structure of the argument. This will be the last chapter with quotes in it.

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**Chapter Five: Admonitions and Revelations**

"You disobey me, you humiliate this family, and you fail to fulfill your obligation to this kingdom! What confidence are the people supposed to have in you now, Daniel? What confidence am _I_ supposed to have in you?!" Jack fumed on his throne. From where he stood listening by the door, Tucker winced, but Daniel kept his back straight and his expression unflinching, as he knew his father and Lancer would expect of him. Showing unease in difficult situations was a weakness in a ruler, and letting his façade fall in front of them would just make the situation worse. "_Explain yourself!"_

He kept his voice carefully even. "I'm sorry, I forgot-"

"You _forgot?!"_ the king raged, and his form glowed with a dark light. "As a result of your careless behavior-"

"Careless and _impertinent _behavior!" Lancer interjected from behind the king, flittering around the throne in agitation.

"-the entire coronation was-"

"It was ruined!" Lancer cried, flying at the young man, too angry to recognize he had interrupted the king – twice. Tucker shifted guiltily, but Daniel remained impassive. "Completely destroyed! Your coronation was to be the pinnacle of my distinguished career!" he bemoaned. "No thanks to you I am the laughing stock of the entire kingdom!"

"But it wasn't his fault!" Tucker blurted out before he could help himself, rushing in between his friend and the livid governor. The king's glowing eyes caught his over Lancer's shoulder, and immediately Tucker's courage abandoned him. "Uh… well… first… uh, we were flying! Yeah! We were on our way back, but Skulker chased us!" Jack's eyes immediately widened in worry, and confidence flooded through Tucker. "We were trying to get away, but we couldn't," Tucker babbled, "and Danny tried to fight him, but it wasn't enough, so we tried to get back to the Threshold, because we knew he wouldn't follow us-"

"Threshold!?" Jack cut him off. Tucker almost phased through the floor when he realized what he had let slip, and he darted out of the two older men's reach. Daniel glared at him. The king's eyes blazed and turned on his son. "You went to the other realm again, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!" he demanded, rising from his throne.

"Nothing happened," Daniel tried to tell his father appeasingly.

The king's expression darkened. "Daniel, I told you once before, and I expected you to obey me! That realm is _dangerous_! You could have been seen by one of those …those _humans_!" The king spat out the word in disgust.

Daniel's temper started to rub at the surface. "We were a hundred feet from the surface! No one could have seen us down there!"

"You don't know what those barbarians capable of," the king said, turning his back on his son dismissively

Cold flames rushed through Daniel's limbs, and he felt himself begin to mirror his father's glow. "They're not barbarians!"

The king rounded on Daniel. "They took your mother!!!" he roared. He let the words sink into the cold air, staring intensely at his son. He had never said this before, and Daniel gazed back at his father in horror, unable to look away. "The human king had lost a ship to a Threshold a month before. He was sending ships to war, and they were headed straight for a Threshold near the surface. We created a storm to try to direct the ships away, but one fell through. Some of the soldiers were fast enough to fly in and grab a few men. They saved as many as they could, but we didn't have time to catch the ship itself. Most of the men died when the ship hit the ground. The king believed we were acting on the side of his enemy, that when we redirected the ships we were preventing them from leaving, that we destroyed the one that fell through.

"We tried to heal the men we saved. We sent people to the living world to bring back what food and water they could find, but it wasn't enough. We didn't know how to treat them. They were still dying. Some of them weren't hurt, but they went crazy with fear of us, of where they were. Your mother insisted we deliver them back to their people. I didn't want her to go. The humans' king had made a declaration of war against us. But she convinced me that there was nothing they could do to her, that we needed to bring the men back out of diplomacy and mercy." The king's voice was thick with grief and guilt. "I- I let her.

"She took a team of soldiers to carry the human men back to their king. Her bodyguard was with her," the king continued quietly, and the bottled rage in his voice was almost as shaking as his outburst. "They captured your mother, somehow, but let her bodyguard return to us. He was given an ultimatum to deliver: that if we ever entered their world again, they would come after us all.

"They rekilled her soldiers, Danny," he said, desperate to make his son understand. "Her bodyguard saw it happen. I don't know how, but they found a way. I don't even know if your mother still has form. They could rekill _you _if they caught you. They are dangerous! For all intents and purposes, we are at _war_," he hissed sharply. "And if it were up to me, if I did not have a kingdom to protect, to avenge your mother I would lead the soldiers into battle now. The only reason why our armies don't line up against each other is because we stay on our side and they stay on theirs. I've never told you before because I… I didn't want you to know it was my fault. I didn't want to burden you with the knowledge we were at war before you were ready. But I can't keep it from you any longer. As the royal heir, you are bound to the same duties and politics as I am. Do you understand?"

Daniel was silent, finally able to tear his eyes away from his father's intense gaze. He looked down at the floor, at a loss for words. Jack took this as answer enough, and turned away with an exhausted sigh. He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Obviously you are not ready for the duties of a crown prince if you can't even remember your own coronation. You'll remain under Sir Lancer's tutelage, and you are not to leave the palace grounds. Report to the library in the morning. Your instruction will continue as before, and we will see in a year if you are ready to take your crown." Jack sat in his throne and gestured almost helplessly to the one beside him. "I'll… have this stored until you've proven yourself ready."

"Yes, sir," Daniel answered quietly.

Jack expected his son to ask his pardon to leave and bow out. But the young man stood there, thoughts churning on his face. "Was there something else?" the king asked.

Daniel looked up. "Who was mom's bodyguard? Is he still here?"

It was Jack's turn to shift uncomfortably. "No, he… The guilt twisted him. And he blamed me. He rekilled himself, but he couldn't cross over."

"He turned into a rogue?" Daniel asked, stunned. "Who is he?"

The king paused painfully. "Skulker."

Daniel's gaze whipped around to meet Tucker's, who returned his look of shock. _Skulker…_ The prince's mind raced. _Who admitted to working for someone else…Could he have been working for them even then? And Skulker won't cross the Threshold, we know that. He avoids it like the plague. Which means whoever he's working for can only be __here__, in the Ghost Zone…_

"He's lying…" Daniel murmured.

"What?" Jack pried.

The young man looked back to his father. "I don't think the humans took her-"

Jack quickly turned livid. "Who, then?! WHO?!"

"I don't know, but Skulker-"

"You know _nothing_, Daniel. I _saw_ the guilt eat at him. I saw him come to hate me. I _saw_ him rekill himself!"

"But-"

"_ENOUGH!"_ the king snapped. "I tell you what happened, and still you try to take their side. Enough of this childish obsession with humans! I'll hear no more of it!"

Daniel's fists clenched. "I'm eighteen years old. I'm not a child!"

"Do NOT argue with me!" he grated. "I am more than your father; I am your _king_. And as long as you live under my authority, you will obey my commands!"

"But if you would just listen!"

"Not another word! And I am never, _NEVER_ to hear of you going through a Threshold again. Is that clear!?"

Daniel clenched his teeth, his own eyes glowing. With a snarl of anger, he turned and streaked to the door, Tucker close on his heels, not wanting to be left in the room with the two seething older men. But at the doorway, Daniel paused, his head hung, then looked back at his father. "It wasn't your fault," he said sadly.

And then he was gone.

Jack slumped back in his seat wearily, covering his face with a hand.

"Hmph, teenagers," Lancer groused. "They think they know everything. You give them an inch, and they phase right through you."

"…Do you think I should have told him that?" Jack asked. "I haven't even told Jasmine the whole story. I wonder if he's really ready to know." More quietly, to himself, he murmured, "…If he'll still respect me."

"You did the right thing, your majesty," Lancer replied stiffly. "This fascination with the other world has to stop. It is born out of ignorance, and can only be borne by ignorance. Once he has been made to understand that they are an enemy and that it is his duty to protect this realm, this nonsense of sneaking through Thresholds will cease!"

Jack gazed at the governor thoughtfully, his face lighting up as a solution came to mind. "You're absolutely right, Lancer."

"Of course!" the ghost replied pompously.

"Daniel needs constant advice, someone to guide him, to keep him out of trouble."

"All the time!"

"And you are just the ghost to do it!" the king declared.

Lancer's eyes went wide with dread. "But, your highness!"

"No, no, it will be perfect!" Jack insisted. "The boy already spends a few hours a day under your instruction. Perhaps he should spend more. Give him enough work that he doesn't have time to even _think _about going to the human realm. And if you remain with him at all times and keep him in line, then maybe he will finally start shaping up into royalty. You can start this moment! Congratulations, Sir Lancer! You have just been promoted to the prince's companion."

Lancer gaped for a moment, trying to see a way out of this. There was none. Cursing himself, he bowed deeply. "Thank you, your majesty. By your leave."

The king nodded and Lancer floated backwards, not turning his back on the king until he had passed through the doors, then gliding away. "How do I get myself into these situations?!" he muttered to himself dispairingly. "I should be writing histories, not tagging along after some headstrong teenager!" Movement caught his eye, and he stopped short at the head of the grand stairs, peering down. Below him, Tucker was handing the prince a pack. Daniel slung it across his back, looking around cautiously before the two took off for the great doors. Lancer's eyebrows furrowed. "What is that boy up to?" The king had specifically said Daniel was not to leave the palace. Certainly he couldn't be thinking of defying his father already?

Oh, wait, this was Daniel, Lancer reminded himself dryly as the two young men slipped out, and with a frown he took off after the prince.

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**A/N: **The plot thickens!

Thank you for your continued reviews! They're helping me improve the story a lot. :D


	6. The Good Life

**A/N:** I sorta overshadowed Danny for this chapter. But it totally fits with the fusion, if you go back to the original Hans Christian Anderson version of _The Little Mermaid_ instead of the Disney version. (In the Anderson version, besides just loving the prince, the mermaid longed to be human so that she could have an immortal soul.)

**Dedication: **To all those who live in fear of death.

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Chapter Six: The Good Life

Like a kite in a downward wind, Lancer wobbled unsteadily far behind the two young men, sinking in exhaustion before realizing he was losing altitude and making himself lurch upward again, clawing at the air as if it would help keep him aloft. They had been flying for almost half an hour, the prince and his friend oblivious to their trailing escort as they passed over the closely clustered stone islands of the Reborn that made up the town around the palace and swooped down to the land below, coasting over graveyards of people who had been buried alive, where hands reached up to tug beggingly at Lancer's robes, and a luminous marsh whose waters were filled with those who had drowned, their eyes and mouths permanently round in terror, staring up at him even after he turned invisible to try to escape their gazes.

The two younger men seemed unfazed, as if they hardly noticed the damned souls, and Lancer suspected must they come this way often.

The landscape now was rough and uneven, scarps jutting high into the air while in others places the earth fell away completely into deep chasms, as though the terrain had been pieced together from misfitting, broken chunks. Panting, Lancer staggered to a landing on a rock, barely able to hold his head up as he watched Daniel and Tucker pull farther away. _Hamlet__! _Lancer cursed. _I'm too old for this. Let them go. I'll have their hides tomorrow, and make sure they can't leave the palace again. So long as they come back in one piece, the king doesn't have to know that they were ever gone at all,_ he reasoned, huffing.

And then paused, straightening in surprise. Not even fifty feet off, the two men had come to a stop, dropping down before a crag face. Daniel glanced around them hastily, his eyes passing over the invisible governor, before he and Tucker turned intangible – and flew right into the stone.

His exhaustion momentarily forgotten, Lancer sped after them, turning intangible and diving into the cliff.

He wasn't sure what he had expected to find when he had gone in after the two men, but it certainly wasn't solid rock. And more rock. And more. Lancer wafted about aimlessly, his sense of direction gone without a sky above or ground below, and unable to see the prince or Tucker anywhere around him. He wandered for several minutes before, frustrated, blind, and beginning to feel intensely claustrophobic, he decided once more to abandon his charges and picked a direction at random, hoping that if he kept going eventually he would emerge somewhere…

And then he was in the open air and free of the stone – only to find himself still inside it.

He had emerged into a cavern within the body of the cliff. The space was suffused with a strange, thin green light, and Lancer gasped as he looked around. The strata of the rock had formed natural shelves from the ceiling above to the floor some distance below, and Lancer's jaw dropped in shock at the things that glinted at him from every nook and cranny: _real_ items. _Human _items. Vases and dishes, sundials and candle holders, globes and scales. Springs. Spectacles. Paintings. Rolled up maps. Books. But as Lancer's eyes traveled upward he discovered the most shocking thing of all: Where he expected to see the ceiling, he instead found a Threshold, spinning serenely. Through the translucent horizon, wavering light filtered down into the cave, and Lancer backed up against the wall, almost knocking several items from the shelves as he stared up in abject wonder. It must be a Threshold near the surface, he realized, and the light coming through was the light of evening in the other realm, tinged green by the glow of the Threshold itself.

He might have hung there, staring in mesmerized horror at the portal above him, but Tucker's voice carried up from below, and Lancer's gaze was pulled down. There, on the floor of the cavern, the dark man sat at a table (a real, _wooden_ table!) cluttered with various human objects, frowning across to the Prince as he withdrew his ectodagger from the sheath on his belt and slid a human dagger in it's place, letting his tunic fall over the hilt to conceal it.

"You think that's smart?" Tucker asked skeptically.

"I'll get another sheath for the ectodagger when we get back home," Daniel shrugged, tucking said weapon into his boot.

"But if your father sees it…"

"He _won't_," Daniel cut him off emphatically, straightening.

Tucker sighed and shook his head. "…You really think Skulker lied about what happened to your mother?" he asked as Daniel began hunting for places to put the other items.

"I think it's possible. Maybe even probable."

"_Why_?" Tucker pressed.

"First, Skulker is the only one to come back. He says that Mother was captured, that all the soldiers were rekilled, but he can't say how. They had never been able to do anything like that before. That they could suddenly have this power, but that Skulker can't say anything about it… it just doesn't add up."

"Maybe he just didn't understand it," Tucker suggested.

"But my mother was _positive_ she'd be safe," Daniel replied. "And then today, Skulker admitted he was working for someone. Someone who evidently wants to rekill us all off. I always wondered why Skulker seemed to get past the guards. He knows the castle, every opening and vulnerability. It just seems too convenient."

"Danny…" Tucker paused, gathering his courage before continuing carefully. "Maybe your mother was wrong."

Daniel scowled at Tucker over his shoulder. "Name me one other time that humans have _ever_ been able to capture or rekill us! They _can't_, Tuck!"

"We don't know that! No one's made contact since then, Danny!" he argued back.

"There's no power on Earth that can touch us, just like there's no law that holds for humans here! It's part of the physics of the Ghost Zone being the obverse of Earth!"

Tucker stiffened. He knew Daniel never paid enough attention to his studies to have learned from them what the word 'obverse' meant, and metaphysical physics was _not_ a subject Lancer knew anything of. There was only one person who could have fed Daniel that piece of information, and Tucker's countenance darkened. "Clockwork told you that, didn't he?"

"Yes!" Daniel snapped. "I know you don't trust him-"

"Clockwork tell you that, too?" Tucker asked sourly.

Daniel seethed. "Does Skulker _seem_ like a ghost twisted by guilt to you?! Does he?!" the prince grated. Tucker didn't answer. On that point he had to admit Daniel was right. Hate, yes. Revenge, possibly. Pleasure in killing, absolutely. But could he really have been someone who had been driven by guilt to kill himself?

Self-hatred wasn't part of his form at all. In fact, the arrogant bastard was the floating antithesis to it.

"Damn it, Tuck!" Daniel broke the silence. "Whose side are you on?"

Tucker hesitated, looking up into his friend's intense stare. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, he thought. He cared too much not to say it. "Clockwork is lying to you."

"What?" Daniel asked, stunned by the sudden turn of conversation.

"When you asked him if he could see who Skulker was working for, he told you no, that he only sees human events. But he knew we had run into Skulker, knew that we were going to be late. Hell, he was expecting you the first time we ran into the place! And you and I are the _only_ ones in the palace who have seen him in the last twenty years, who know where he haunts! Do you realize that?" Daniel rubbed between his eyes with his fingers, and Tucker pressed on. "He's playing you, man. I don't know what for, but you can't trust him."

Daniel gazed at the ground pensively. "He's never led me astray before."

"Or he's been leading you astray this whole time."

Daniel looked up at Tuck, surprised by the certainty in his voice. "What do you mean?"

"_This_," Tucker answered emphatically, gesturing at the cavern and its hold. Daniel bristled, but remained silent. "This obsession is what holds you to him, Danny, because you think he has all the answers. But he never told you about the war, did he? And if your father's right, and we're all but at war with the human world, then whatever Clockworks intentions are, they could have something to do with that. What if he wanted you to breech the agreement by being seen? What if he wanted a full out conflict?"

"He's only ever warned me against making contact, even accidentally," Daniel gritted out. "And he's a ghost. What could he possibly stand to benefit from a war with the humans?"

"Kings have enemies, Danny," Tucker crossed his arms, echoing Clockwork's words from earlier in the day and adding, "And they aren't always what you would expect." Daniel shook his head in disbelief, unable to see his mentor in that light, and Tucker growled in exasperation. "At the very least, you have to admit he's disrupted everything! You shirk your studies, you miss your own coronation, we almost get poached by Skulker, all at his encouragement! And for what? A cavern full of _junk_." He crossed his arms, looking Daniel squarely in the eye. "Your father's right, Danny. You gotta let this go."

"I _can't_!" the prince burst. He floated on the other side of the table, his chest heaving and eyes bright, not with anger, Tucker realized, but with something akin to desperation. "I can't!" Daniel repeated more softly, as if begging the other man to understand. "This goes beyond Clockwork. Beyond anyone. Even if I never went to Clockwork again, I can't stop going over the Threshold. As horrible as it sounds, there's a part of me that doesn't care if there's a war, doesn't care what the consequences to everyone could be if I were seen, what the consequences would be to me if I were caught, if that's even possible. I don't care about any of it. _I can't let this go_!"

Anger boiled within Tucker, his respect for his friend shriveling at his words. He knew Daniel was fascinated with the living world to the point where it was sometimes distracting, but this… this was a whole new level. This was supposed to be the crown prince? The next king? A man with no sense of responsibility to his people at all? "Why, Daniel?" he spat furiously. The prince flinched at the use of his full name – something Tucker hadn't called him in years. "Why? Because if they _can_ rekill us, you're willing to put all our afterlives on the line. Explain it to me!"

The prince turned back to the shelves determinedly, quickly finding a book and pulling it out. He flipped it open, thumbing through to a certain page, then turned back, slamming the open book down in front of his friend. "Because of _that_!" he exclaimed, pointing to the page. Tucker looked down at it in confusion. On the leaf before him was a painting, its colors a little thin from the years it had spent underwater before Daniel had found it, but the image was still clear. In the portrait, a human woman sat, her clothing loose, exposing her shoulder and her legs up to her knees. Her face was turned away, her long hair draped over her pale shoulder, and her chin in her hand as she contemplated a golden flame on the table beside her. In her lap sat a skull, the cavity of its mouth gaping horridly with it's missing lower jaw. But the woman's hand rested on its forehead almost tenderly, as though it were a lover or a child resting his head upon her thigh.

"A painting?" Tucker asked in disbelief.

"Yes!" Daniel cried, as if the answer were obvious.

"I don't understand."

"Think about it," Daniel said, taking the seat across from him. "We have no painters in the Ghost Zone. No poets, no writers, no real musicians - except for Ember and the Ghost Writer, but their obsession is fame, not the thing they create. There's no portraits in the palace. And the players at my father's court can only play phrases for ceremonies. No inventors either. There's no one who ever tried to _do_ anything with their lives, even something simple. Just souls who spent their entire lives being driven mad by what they didn't have, what they _didn't_ do, and us, the Reborns, who weren't alive long enough to do anything at all. _Why_?" the prince asked ardently. "Why do they all pass on while we linger here?"

"But we do cross over, eventually," Tucker replied. "At least the Reborns do."

"But not for centuries, sometimes millennia! Why?Because we don't _accomplish_ anything! You've listened to Lancer's history lessons. It's this king followed that king followed the next, but nothing _happens. _Nothing ever changes here, Tuck."

"What reason is there for it to?" Tucker asked confused.

"Exactly! We don't need food, or water, or sleep. We breathe, but only because it tells others what we're feeling. We don't need air. There's no weather here, so we can't get hot or cold. We don't catch diseases. There's no _death_."

"Yes, there is," Tucker shot back with a tone of sarcasm. "We're _dead._"

"It's not the same thing. Yes, we can be rekilled. We are rekilled on occasion. But there's no specter of death haunting us ever minute of the day in a hundred different ways, driving us to be better, to accomplish something more, to stay just out of it's reach. When most of us do cross over, we just… slowly fade out.

"And _this_," the prince said, taking the book back from his friend and gazing down at the painting, "art, invention, words and music just for the sake of pleasure - they fly in the face of death entirely precisely because they are not necessary to staying ahead of it. Don't you see, Tuck? There are never any writers or inventers or musicians or artists here because they accomplished something with their lives beyond living. _That's_ why they cross over: crossing over can't be death – the only place where there can only be no death is within death itself, and that's _here_, in the Ghost Zone. So if they're no longer living, and they aren't here, then whatever crossing over is, it must be escaping death entirely."

Daniel rose, clutching the book in one arm, half turning away with a distant expression on his face before turning back. He looked at Tucker nervously. "I- I want that," he confessed. "I want to live a life, to have a chance to do something _meaningful_, to defy death even as I die, not live out death here." He looked up longingly past the invisible Lancer to the Threshold that showered light down on them. "I want to live like the people do. I want to be cut and feel _real_ pain, to stand in the sun and feel _real_ warmth, not just echoes of it like I do now." He looked back at his friend, his eyes fervent. "I want to know the things they know – to _have_ to know it to live! To have death at my shoulder every day! I-" he stumbled, and looked down at his form. "I don't know how to explain it. I spend every day feeling like half of me is missing, that I should be _more_ than this. I should be _alive_. I would give anything for that."

"…Your kingdom?" Tucker asked cautiously, remembering what the prince had said a few minutes earlier.

Daniel looked down, shamed at what he had said in his outburst. "No. I couldn't. But… I would give my crown."

Tucker surveyed his friend appraisingly. "It's really worth that much to you?"

Daniel looked back up at him again, meeting his eyes with an inspired passion. "It's worth dying for."

_Dying_, Tucker thought. _Not 'redying'._ Not fading out slowly, peacefully crossing over, but _dying_, perhaps painfully, torturously, brutally. Perhaps by age, all faculties and reason and function slowly eroding. Or by disease, being eaten from the inside out. To Daniel, life, and the chance to live it well, was worth that.

And that was something he would never be able to do here, within death itself.

Tucker gauged his friend, and for a moment, looking in his eyes, had the strange sensation not of looking at a ghost, but of looking at a human, at someone vital and solid and _alive_. "… I think I understand," Tucker said quietly. And he did think he understood at last his friend's obsession with the living world, if only a little.

There was a part of Daniel that had never died.

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**A/N:** So I hope no one's brain is hurting too bad! I know that got kind of deep and philosophical and probably too OOC, but I really wanted Danny's psychology to be rooted in a solid conviction. Seems kind of necessary when you're a man whose supposed to be the next king, rather than just the rebellious youngest daughter who would be married off anyways. ;) And if Danny weren't angsty, it would be even more OOC. XD

I wrote this with absolutely no idea if you guys would like it. I know fanfictions are usually pretty light fare, so let me know what you think!

(If you found this chapter totally engrossing, go type 'Eudaimonia' into Wikipedia and read the section on Aristotle for more. Geek out!)


	7. Surfacing

**A/N: WOW! I got ***16*** reviews for the last chapter!!! You guys are AWESOME! Thank you so much! :D**

So this is only the first part of Chapter Seven. Midterms have hit already (I swear school just started!!!) and I'm swamped. The two hour round-trip commute to the university and back is killing me. All I want to do is sleep. Updates are probably going to be only once a week for now. Chapter seven is turning out to be really long. This isn't finished, but I hit a really good stopping point about half way and decided to post this rather than leave you guys waiting a whole week more for an update! Part two to follow. :)

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**Chapter Seven**

**Fireworks and Near-Death Experiences**

**-Part One-**

Lancer pressed himself back against the wall, aghast at what he had overheard. Skulker working for someone? And Clockwork? He had mentored the boy? For _years_? What could it all mean? And it was worse than he had thought! The prince didn't just want to go to the living realm; he wanted to be _alive_! Would rather be alive than be crowned!

And the king…

_In Praise of Folly_! What would the king say?

Lancer put his hand out blindly, reaching for the shelf behind him to steady himself, but leaned on a bottle instead. The treacherous object rolled out from beneath him, sending him flipping head over tail with a cry of surprise, and he grabbed for the closest thing in reach to catch himself. The bottle twirled to the ground below, shattering with a tinkle, and Daniel and Tucker jumped up into the air in alarm, their eyes shooting upwards. The only moving thing to be seen was a corner of cloth hanging from a high shelf, puckering and wrinkling under the pull of some invisible weight. The two men watched in dread as the sheet slowly slid from the shelf, and they ducked and turned intangible as a rain of objects that had been sitting on the sheet were pulled down with it. Doohickeys, plates, and beads fell through a flurry of papers, smashing and bounding across the floor, but when Daniel peered up through the twirling sheaves, the sheet was still suspended in midair and flailing wildly.

With Tucker at his shoulder, Daniel shot upwards till he was level with the invisible intruder, molding a shimmering ball of ectoenergy between his hands. "STOP!" he bellowed, holding the energy threateningly but reluctant to throw it lest more objects be destroyed. "Show yourself!"

The ghoul flung off the sheet, and it rippled through the air to land with a whisper in a crumpled pile on the dusty ground. The man before them glared at them hotly, his nostrils flaring in displeasure. Daniel gasped, and from behind him he heard Tucker do the same.

"_Lancer_!" Daniel blurted in mortification, the ectoenergy evaporating from his hands.

"Daniel," the governor barked, "what is this?!"

"Uh – it's my collection," Daniel answered apprehensively.

"Your '_collection'_?" Lancer gaped. "Are you _mad?_! I knew you had been through the Threshold a couple of times, but _this_ –" he looked around him in revulsion, "I can't imagine how many times you must have gone through to find all these things, when your father _ordered_ you never to go to the living realm! You betrayed him-"

"No!" Daniel protested desperately. "I-"

"Yes, you did!" Lancer cut him off, spitting in his fury, and Daniel cringed. "As your father and as your king!" Lancer's voice went dangerously quiet. "How could you?"

Daniel didn't answer, but hovered stiffly, his expression closed as if he had folded in on himself and his eyes focused on the ground far below them.

Lancer sighed in exasperation. "What are we going to do with you, Daniel? If your father found out about this-"

"You aren't going to tell him, are you?!" Tucker shot toward the man imploringly. "He would never understand!"

Lancer rubbed his face with a hand tiredly. "No," he answered. "I can't. King Phantom would disown him. He'd have to. The court would demand it."

"Let him," Daniel said quietly, and the two men turned back to him in surprise. The prince looked up at them, resigned. "I said I would rather give up my crown than give up this. I meant it. It's better it happens quietly now, rather than me trying to keep hiding this and it exploding later."

"_No_," Lancer stated flatly, moving around Tucker to confront Daniel. "That won't happen. I won't let you do that to yourself. Daniel-" he tried to grip the young man's shoulders sympathetically, but Daniel wrenched himself away from his touch.

"I won't give this up!"

"Daniel, you're _dead_!!!" the governor shouted harshly. "You can never be a part of that world!" The young man glared at him with glowing eyes, but Lancer could see the uncertainty behind them. Daniel _knew_ it was true – how could he not? – and Lancer softened in sympathy, watching the internal war that rippled beneath the young man's defiance. "I overheard your conversation with Tucker. You are not doing nothing here. It may not be what you want, but… Sometimes the greatest thing we can do is be our best at what fate has allotted us. And much of the greatness comes from it being harder than doing what we wish we could. You are the heir to the throne. There is no one else."

Daniel stared down past Lancer's feet in turmoil. He knew Lancer was right. There was no life for him. There never could be, as much as he might wish it. The right thing to do, maybe even the good thing, would be to forget the other world and apply himself to his royal duties with as much energy as had spent on the treasures around him. But there was another part of him that writhed at the idea, that screamed that the man's words were just apathy rationalized, reminded him that his grandfather had reigned for almost four hundred years. His father before him had ruled even longer, yet their chapters in Lancer's history books were only a few dozen pages, and the dread that rose in him argued that to submit to such morality was submission to unending death. The medallion he wore hidden beneath his shirt burned against his breast. _A symbol of the king_, Clockwork had said, _of responsibility and authority_. A symbol of a great king, the kind of ruler he should be. But the symbol of a living one too, and Daniel was torn.

"…Daniel," Lancer broke into his thoughts, "you don't have to go looking for greatness. It's been given to you by rebirth, if you would just take it."

Daniel looked up at his teacher, clarity washing over him like cold water. "Then it's not greatness at all."

Lancer opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything the light in the cavern quivered, and Daniel looked up in time to see a shadow passing above the portal, eclipsing the Threshold. The light ebbed out completely, and the cavern melted into darkness. _A ship? _he wondered breathlessly.

Without a second thought, Daniel flew towards the event horizon. He had almost reached it when he felt a grip around his arm pulling him back, and as the shadow withdrew from above he looked down to see Lancer's hardened face. "Don't even think about it," Lancer warned darkly.

But a serene certainty came over the prince, and he looked down at his teacher with an odd expression of detachment, as if seeing the man for the first time. "You can't tell anyone," Daniel realized. "Not without causing the exact thing you don't want to happen. You can't do anything." Tucker floated up beside them, watching the exchange warily. Daniel moved back from Lancer's grasp and the governor didn't offer any resistance, looking at the young man in astonishment. The prince turned to his friend. "My father said Skulker had seen the humans rekill all of my mother's soldiers; but if Skulker is working for someone, we can't believe what he said. I'm going to see for myself."

Without waiting for Tucker's reply, Daniel turned back up toward the portal and rose through it. With a distrustful glance at Lancer, Tucker followed, slipping through the Threshold soundlessly, leaving the older man staring up at the vortex in dread. _Leviathan! I have completely lost control of the boy_, he thought in dismay. _He's realized I have no real authority. All I can do now is try to dissuade him from going too far._

Was he really thinking of crossing the Threshold? Him? Sir Lancer, loyal servant of the king? _But what choice do I have?_ he thought with a chill. With a shuddering breath, he gathered his courage and shot up towards the portal –

Only to almost fall back through when he hit the water on the other side. The unexpected pressure of being several meters deep was crushing, as though he had emerged into liquid rock. He thrashed against its thick weight, his limbs moving pitifully slow as if he could not command them. Panicking, he turned intangible-

And the weight was gone.

Gasping, he spun, looking around him. He was hovering over the swirling Threshold, halfway between the glittering surface and the ocean floor. Faint streams of twilight shot through the grey-green waters, dancing in coruscating patterns over an alien landscape florid with color and with _life_: peach coral and orange sponges nestled between crimson sea grass and clusters of pale blue anemones that blossomed like flowers. Over it all, giant seaweed rose like ethereal trees, their leaves trembling in the currents. A school of fish darted between the plants, turning and flitting in perfect unison like a single animal, the light flashing off their bright scales like they were living drops of silver.

A shadow of movement caught Lancer's eye, and he looked up to see Daniel silhouetted against the light, cutting expertly through the water towards the surface with a wisp of an intangible Tucker close behind. Grimacing in determination, Lancer steeled himself and slipped after them.

Daniel broke the surface cautiously, letting only his head and shoulders emerge from the water. Coming to the surface where he might be seen wasn't something he had dared to do very often, and he put his arms out and let go, allowing the water to hold him up, the foamy waves rolling over his shoulders. He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of the wind that blew across his wet skin, and he pushed back the consuming longing that welled within him. How much more euphoric would this be if he could feel it with real skin, real limbs, a living body, instead of just the echoes of what it was to feel faintly remembered by his soul…

Swallowing the bitter yearning, he opened his eyes and treaded water, peering through the gathering darkness for what could have eclipsed the Threshold. To his left there was a hoarse whistle, and he turned in time to see a shower of golden light bloom in the darkness with a violent clap. Another followed, and another on top of it, amethyst tails and blue sparks that burst outward, twirling and cascading down before twinkling out over the water. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel saw Tucker surface beside him only to immediately duck back under with a yelp at the next explosion. The man poked out from the water timidly, letting only his eyes show, but Daniel watched the lights in rapture, hardly breathing.

Lancer popped up on the prince's other side, his foul mood firmly in place. He was going to give Daniel a piece of his mind, and opened his mouth to start his tirade – but the words died on his tongue. Was the boy _swimming?! _He suppressed a shudder at the sight of something so unnatural and groped for the patronizing sentiment he'd commanded a moment before, but it had abandoned him. Sounding more unnerved than condescending, he stammered, "Your highness-" A deafening crash cut him off, and the governor jolted backward as pearls of orange flame tore open the night sky. "_Dante's Inferno_!_"_ he cried. "We have to get out of here!"

"No, no!" Daniel shouted ecstatically over the booms. "They're called fireworks! It's just for show! They're celebrating something!"

"How would you know?!" Lancer shot back, trying to hide his panic.

Daniel glanced back over his shoulder at him, his eyes bright. "Clockwork told me."

"Of course he did," Tucker muttered irately, too softly be heard.

The prince looked back up to the sky in awe. "I never thought I'd actually get to see them."

The next shell exploded low in the sky, and the three men gasped: bathed briefly in the golden white light was an enormous ship, its three masts towering majestically into the clouds, the canvass sails pregnant with the wind. Darkness swallowed it again, but Daniel could make out its topmost sail in the next flash of light, and the decision seized him before he had even thought about it.

"I'm going on board," he declared.

"What?!" Lancer squawked, grabbing Daniel's arm. "You can't! You'll be caught!"

"I'll stay invisible," he assured, pulling away. Turning intangible, he rose out of the water dry, and then vanished altogether, with only a faint ruffling of the air to suggest the prince had flown off.

"Daniel!" the governor cried desperately. "Daniel, please! Come back!!!

There was no reply.

Lancer looked over to Tucker nervously. The other boy was scowling after his friend, obviously waging a debate within himself, and with a exasperated groan rose into the air as well. "Tucker! I forbid you from going with him!"

"He's my friend. I can't let him go in there alone."

"Friends don't lead friends into suicide!" Lancer hissed.

Tucker glowered down at the bald man. "Daniel might be right about what Skulker said. There's only one way to find out. And beyond friendship, Daniel's my lord. I have to protect him if I can, as should you. Aren't you the one always going on about duty?" Tucker shot back, and took off, vanishing midair.

Lancer bobbed in the water, gaping, alone now with the horrible shadow of the ship looming out in front of him. _But Tucker's right_, he thought in dismay. _Even in folly, Daniel is still the heir to the throne._ He had devoted himself to the royal family. If he abandoned Daniel now, what was he? Rolling his eyes, he growled, "That boy is going be the redeath of me, I know it," and followed.

Daniel swooped down over the ship, grinning in exhilaration. He dove between the sails and back out, carving around to soar through the masts again, peering down at the open decks. Below, men in white shirts and black pants heaved ropes and scaled the rigging, pulling the sails taut with a practiced synchronicity, as if they were all moving to a silent rhythm.

…Or maybe not so silent after all. Daniel pulled to a stop as music drifted faintly to his ears – _real _music, he realized in awe as the melody did not disappear at the end of the refrain, but fell and rose and fell magically into one phrase after another. He dropped closer to the deck, floating between the bottom sails, and listened in wonder. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, swaying between jubilant and mournful as though it wasn't sure which to feel, or perhaps felt both at once. Entwined in the instruments were voices, but he could not make out the words.

Where was it coming from? There – that direction! He turned and flew towards the aft of the ship, phasing through the mast – and stopped short in surprise. There below him was a large group of sailors. Near the back, beneath the railing of the stern castle, several men sat on crates playing instruments: pipes and drums and a carved wooden box with strings that he touched with something like a miniature of a bow used with arrows and one with an odd contraption that he expanded and compressed between his hands. The other men were sitting around them or dancing, their feet stomping the cadence as they sang, and as Daniel landed behind the railing above them he could hear the words.

"…_Oh! Give me a flowing sea!_

_And a wind that follows fast_

_And fills the white and rustling sail_

_And bends the gallant mast!_

_Oh for a soft and gentle wind,_

_I heard a fair one cry._

_But give to me the roaring breeze,_

_And the white waves heaving high!_

_And the white waves heaving high, my boys,_

_The good ship tight and free._

_The world of waters is our home_

_And merry men are we!_

_There's a tempest in yon horned moon_

_And lightning in yon cloud_

_And hard the music mariners_

_The wind is piping loud!_

_The wind is piping loud, my boys._

_The lightning flashes free._

_And the heaving waves our death will be,_

_Our destiny the sea!"_

The prince watched them in breathless rapture. He had seen drawings, portraits and illustrations of people in his books, but never had he seen the living like this: loud and solid and moving and _so close_. They grinned at each other, some of them with crazy gap-toothed smiles, laughing raucously, and a cheer went up as the notes of the next song sounded. Their voices wrapped around Daniel and filled him, and an ache bloomed in his chest, something like he had only felt once before when he was little, when he had slipped from the palace by himself and gotten lost exploring, and in his childish imagination had thought he would never see home again…

He gazed down at the sailors, and for a strange moment the fabric of reality seemed to shift, like the feeling of falling into one of the currents of time that flowed around Clockwork's tower. Suddenly it seemed that the scene below was the familiar and it was his own world that was alien and fantastical. He watched as the men began to dance, gallivanting around each other, and the desire to go down and be among them, to be _seen_ and to feel himself to be real to them was piercing…

He felt himself start to turn visible, and turned away from the railing quickly, closing his eyes and clutching his chest. _It feels like being homesick,_ he realized with a pang. _I'm homesick… for a place I've never been._

He started to drift away from the railing, but the sensation made him nauseated, and he landed and walked instead, his eyes cast down.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" a voice in front of him startled him from his thoughts, and his head snapped up in panic. There before him, floating a few inches off the planks, was Clockwork in his adult form, his staff gripped in his strong hand. "They know they will die out here, that eventually the perilous sea will claim them, and yet they sing about it, and dance, reveling in the very life that will lead them to their deaths."

Daniel gasped and whipped around to see if anyone else was nearby, then glanced down at himself to make sure he hadn't really turned visible after all.

"They cannot see or hear us," Clockwork assured him. "Only we can see each other."

"What are you doing here?" Daniel asked in disbelief.

"Observing," Clockwork answered nonchalantly. "Sometimes I find it more useful to see to things in person."

"Like lecturing me for coming here, I'm guessing," Daniel said morosely, walking past the time ghost to lean on the far railing, watching the frothy wake that rolled out behind the ship.

"If I were going to do that, I would have done it before you came," Clockwork said, joining him. "But you would have come anyways, so it would have been pointless."

Daniel stiffened, anger bubbling up within him. "Tucker was right!" he exclaimed incredulously. "You don't just observe human affairs. You've been watching me."

"What is a human affair?" Clockwork shrugged casually, shifting into an infant as if to show how little the young man's glowing eyes impressed him.

"You _lied_ to me!"

"No, Daniel," Clockwork said calmly. "I never lied to you. I told you, I only observe human affairs. But the fate of living realm and the Ghost Zone are intertwined."

"Then what _isn't_ a human affair?" Daniel asked sharply. The ghost hovered serenely, gesturing as if to hand the question back to him, and realization dawned over Daniel's face. _What wasn't a human affair, if the two worlds were intertwined?_ His eyebrows furrowed in furry. "Nothing," he answered for himself. "You know who Skulker is working for! Tell me! Tell me who!!!"

"I said before, I can't tell you."

"No, you _won't_," Daniel spat, turning away.

Clockwork morphed into an old man and put a gnarled hand on the prince's shoulder. "I won't because I can't. Time is like a tapestry, and if some threads are woven through before others, the picture will not emerge. It will be a mess of lines and colors, and cease to mean anything at all. You must trust me, Daniel, when I say you will learn who Skulker is working for. But there are other things that must happen first, or it will be for naught."

"How can I trust you?" the prince asked distrustfully over his shoulder. "Even if you never lied, you've kept the truth from me. You never told me about the war."

"War is the lie, Daniel. War is always a lie, because it can only stand on the conviction that the side you're fighting is an other that is unfathomable to you, so unlike you as to be a threat in its very existence. But you know differently, precisely because you knew nothing and could only see things for what they were. You have seen the truth in the books you have found, in the paintings. You have seen it down there among those men. The truth is what you feel in your soul."

Daniel closed his eyes again and gripped the railing, his anger melting as the ache burgeoned in his chest. He stood with his head bowed, lost in the pain and confusion, and Clockwork spoke gently, "You are not different from them."

"I'm dead," he bit out softly, and buried his face in his hands, his white hair sticking out messily between his fingers. "What do I do?" Daniel asked, his voice crushed with torment. "I can't obey my father, but I can't live either."

"You will know what is right."

Daniel lifted his head and looked at Clockwork, comprehension trickling over him. Coming from the master of time, such a comment could never be just rhetorical, for the sake of comfort alone, the prince realized. And, indeed, there was a knowing gleam in Clockwork's eyes.

"When?" Daniel asked suspiciously. "When will I know? What's going to happen?"

"That," Clockwork answered with a faint smirk, "is up to you."

Daniel straightened, epiphany pressing upon him as the time ghost began to drift away from him toward the main deck. "Wait, you could have stopped me! Why did you let me come here?" he demanded, following him.

Clockwork smiled, and began to fade out, his last words purling around Daniel on the wind. "Because it's time…"

* * *

**A/N:** Dun, dun, DUN! Cliffhanger!!!

**And for the geeks like me:**

I've decided to keep all of Lancer's literary references within the time period I'm guessing the story takes place in (mid 1600s and prior). For those readers curious how those reference fit into the story:

**Hamlet** – (actually from the beginning of chapter 6) There is one very loose correlation between Hamlet and what is going to happen in this story, but I'm not telling you what it is yet. Can anyone figure it out? ;)

**In Praise of Folly** – _Written by __Desiderius Erasmus in 1509. A satirical work in which the quality of Folly is a character which praises self-deception, madness, and faith corrupted by superstition._ Beginning of the chapter, after Lancer has overheard Danny and Tuck's argument from chapter 6 and thinks Daniel is out of his mind.

**Leviathan** – _A political philosophical work by Thomas Hobbes from 1651 arguing the necessity of an absolute, all-powerful central government such as a monarchy._ Lancer cusses this after Daniel has realized Lancer really has no authority to do anything and no power over him.

**Dante's Inferno** – _Written by Dante in the early 14__th__ century. A poem describing Dante's trip through the circles of Hell, with the Roman poet Virgil as his tour guide._ Just a play on words: Inferno is a synonym for 'fire' and Lancer cusses this when looking at the fireworks.

The sea shanty the sailors sang is not something I came up with myself. I did change the last couple lines though to fit the story. Here's the actual lyrics below:

"A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea"

www. sailorsongs. com/ a_wet_ sheet_and_ a_flowing_sea. html

"_The wind is piping loud my boys_

The lightning flashes free

While the hollow oak our palace is

Our heritage the sea"

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your awesome reviews!!! :D


	8. Symmetry and Prophecy

**A/N: **Sorry I've been gone soooo long! University and a two and a half hour daily commute there and back has been a killer. But the government has been so good as to gut financial aid for the quarter and give me the summer off, so hopefully I'll be able to continue more regularly for the next three months. :D

**WARNING: **This chapter is completely infected by the old Victorian novels I've been reading, _North and South _by Elizabeth Gaskell, and _The Hunchback of Notre Dame _by Victor Hugo, so the narration and dialogue might seem really archaic and difficult to read. My apologies. I really have to be careful what I read when I'm writing, because I always end up imitating it! On the other hand, if you like Austen, Bronte, or Eliot, you'll enjoy the style in this chapter.

**WARNING #2: **This chapter is _heavily_ philosophical. But since I've gotten almost 20 enthusiastic reviews on my last philosophical chapter, I thought you guys wouldn't mind me going there again. This section especially deals with ethics and metaphysics. The discussion of ethics is fairly self-explanatory, but the metaphysics part is more confusing. I would suggest hopping over to YouTube and watching **"Imagining the 10****th**** Dimension" parts 1 and 2 **(11 minutes total). It will make what Clockwork says MUCH more understandable.

You also should be aware of the concept of **time reversal symmetry,** which postulates that time as the 4th dimension actually flows two directions, not just the one that we lowly 3 dimensional creatures are able to perceive, so that things that happen in the future can be the cause of things that happen in the past.

Confused yet? Bwahahaha.

Enjoy. : D

**P.S.: (Because this has already happened once.) Anyone who uses the review board to try to convert me to their religion will have their post deleted... or maybe posted at the end of the next chapter and pecked to bloody shreds, depending on my mood. is NOT the appropriate place to evangelize someone – especially when you choose to do it **_**anonymously**_** (are you serious? Why would you go declaring how great your God is but hide who you are, unless you already **_**know**_** that what you are doing is inappropriate?)****. I am not Christian, and have no desire to be. There **_**will**_** be Christianity as part of the backdrop of the story, since it takes place in the middle ages or renaissance, but the story itself is not of a Christian theme! Please don't go trying to use my own story to convert me. It's offensive, and makes you look really dumb, because Aristotle lived more than 300 years **_**before**_** Christ, so obviously that is **_**not**_** what he was talking about.**

* * *

_**~ Previously ~**_

"You will know what is right."

Daniel lifted his head and looked at Clockwork, comprehension trickling over him. Coming from the master of time, such a comment could never be just rhetorical, for the sake of comfort alone, the prince realized. And, indeed, there was a knowing gleam in Clockwork's eyes.

"When?" Daniel asked suspiciously. "When will I know? What's going to happen?"

"That," Clockwork answered with a faint smirk, "is up to you."

Daniel straightened, epiphany pressing upon him as the time ghost began to drift away from him toward the main deck. "Wait, you could have stopped me! Why did you let me come here?" he demanded, following him.

Clockwork smiled, and began to fade out, his last words purling around Daniel on the wind. "Because it's time…"

* * *

**~ Chapter Eight ~**

_**Symmetry and Prophecy**_

The ocean peaked and rolled, shifting between amethyst and black as it folded over itself like a discarded piece of silk. In the distance, the inky waters merged with the descending night, dissolving the horizon so that it seemed the world above and below were melding, everything beyond evening's glimmer sliding into a void that was quickly closing in on him as he flew, and Tucker tried to keep his eyes on the middle distance.

But the behemoth of a ship that loomed before him did nothing to steel his nerves. It sat rocking in the waters like an agitated beast, and the wood groaned and creaked with more agony than all the cries of the damned. An awful winding wail and thumping reached his ears that sent a chill down his spine. The sound of raucous laughter rose from beneath it, the joyous sound a jarring, twisted dichotomy to the eerie rhythmic drone and malicious hissing of the waves, and he would have reeled back had he not already committed his form into its flight and divorced his mind from any power to divert his body from it's path.

Was that... music? Tucker's stomach rolled. A brief refrain might have suggested it, but the unnatural, interminable sound that wafted towards him was nothing like anything he had imagined from all of Daniel's books, the prose and poetry that compared heaven and glory and love to it's sublime cadences, and the paintings of gods and kings in which the invisible notes of the minstrels seemed meant to adorn with as much majesty as silk.

But this... this was a coarse, jagged, frightening sound, tormented one moment and giddy the next like a mad man.

He had a brief flash of hope that maybe Daniel would hear this, see the people laughing maniacally to it, and finally realize in horror that the world he had imagined the living realm to be was nothing like the one before him.

But almost as immediately, with a feeling like a cold stone in his gut, Tucker knew that wouldn't be the prince's reaction at all. He had seen the living fire in Daniel's eyes back in the cave, the alien gleam of a soul not content with mere existence, a light that might have been the sunlight of the other world piercing the ocean above the threshold to shine down and reflect in the prince's eyes... except that they had spent countless hours in that cavern from the time they had been boys, and however strangely the sun illuminated the cave, it had never before made Daniel look almost...

Alive.

_How am I going to find him_? Tucker wondered despondently. The prince would be invisible. How would he know where on the ship Daniel was, or even when he left? _I should never have let him get so far ahead._

He was almost upon the ship now, and he looked up at the soaring heights in tremulous awe. He had only ever seen these vessels silent and broken upon the ocean floor. To look upon it now was like beholding a corpse risen from its grave. The topmasts were lost in the darkness, their sails no more than wavering gray shapes above the immense canvass squares and jibs that hung on the yardarms like someone crucified, trying to pull free and snapping viciously. Another moment, and he would be over the main deck.

But he _would not_ abandon Daniel...

Taking a deep breath, Tucker grimace in determination and put on a burst of speed-

And crashed head first into a wall.

He fell to the floor in a daze, his vision swimming. Green and gray blurred and ran together, and instinctively Tucker tried to sit up to better see where he was. But he had hardly righted himself when something heavy bowled into him, throwing him back to the floor.

"Oration on the Dignity of Man!"

Tucker twisted his neck to glance over his shoulder at the man sprawled across him. "Lancer?"

"What happened?" the governor croaked as he clambered woozily off the younger man's back.

Tucker grunted and pushed himself to his hands and knees – then blinked. The floor beneath him was not the wood of a deck, but stone.

He looked up in alarm that quickly burst into a dizzying rush of both relief and cold fury at once. The pulsing beat of the music had transformed into the mechanical percussions of gears and hammers, and the heaving waters settled into the silent shifting of colored light over stone, cast by the enormous lenses which draped the walls like glass ivy.

"W-Where are we?" Lancer asked, looking around him anxiously.

Tucker didn't answer the him, but rose up into the air with a growl. "Clockwork! Show yourself!" But the hall was silent. Tucker turned, looking for any sign of the man. "Clockwork!"

"I am here," a voice came from behind him, and Tucker whirled to find the ghost in his elder form, gazing at him with his perpetually serene expression. Below Tucker, Lancer drew back in trepidation at who he beheld; but Clockwork's unperturbed countenance, despite his own meddling, only raised Tucker's ire further.

His hands clenched in frustration. "Send us back."

"No."

Tucker was so used to the time ghost's cryptic replies, that the straight answer startled him for a moment. "What do you mean 'no'?"

"I cannot send you back."

"Daniel is still back there, dammit! He doesn't know he's alone."

"On the contrary, he knows it far better than you do."

_Back to the riddles_, Tucker thought, his teeth grinding. The implication in Clockwork's words sent a trickle of dread down his spine, but Tucker refused to rise to the bait. "I am _not_ abandoning Daniel," he bit out. "Now send me back."

Clockwork looked at him solemnly. "You are too late."

The dread bloomed into icy fear. "What's happened? What have you done?"

"Nothing."

"You said I was too late!"

Clockwork frowned in consternation. "That perhaps is not the right wording, since you could not be on time. But there is no way to put it to you that you would understand."

Though Clockwork sounded apologetic rather than patronizing, Tucker seethed, and Lancer watching from where he stood eye level with the tips of their tails thought it was fortunate for the other ghost that the boy had no natural powers. The prince in such a state would have erupted in a flare that would have singed the stone black and been helpless to stop it. "Does Daniel know you're meddling here?" Tucker demanded.

"I am talking to him as we speak."

"...You can split your form?" Lancer asked breathlessly, hardly daring to utter a word, only finding his voice out of some latent instinct of self-preservation which sought to know the present danger, though it might bring it down upon him to draw it's attention.

Clockwork did indeed look down to the trembling man, but with a sympathetic smile. "No."

"Then how-"

"Duplicating myself would be redundant. You are thinking too linearly. It is more of a curling up on myself," Clockwork answered casually, as if they were figures languidly conversing in one of Daniel's pastoral paintings instead of in the midst of some doom befalling the prince. "I perceive temporality and move about it as you move about the space of this room. My existence stretches throughout time. If I want to be in two places in what you would perceive as the same moment, I simply need to move so that two parts of myself meet, not unlike how you would bring your hands together, or how a snake coils up upon itself."

"You're a damn snake, alright," Tucker snapped, and Lancer cowered, taking a step back from the two. How did Tucker dare to speak to the ghoul like that when he could not protect himself from his retaliation, especially after Clockwork had just revealed his own power to be beyond anything anyone had imagined? Yet Clockwork merely leaned on his staff in midair, considering Tucker seriously but seemingly unfazed by his wrath. "You have led Daniel into this. Bring him back, like you did us."

"I cannot."

"Then stop whatever is happening!"

"I cannot stop now what hasn't happened yet. What is happening happened long ago, and will happen one way or another."

"_ENOUGH_ with the conundrums! You said you can move through time. You knew when Daniel and I would come today, so don't try to tell me you can't see the future. Use your powers and s_ave_ him!"

Clockwork looked at Tucker sadly. "I can see the future, yes, and the past, such as they are. But both are constantly changing. What is the past in the present may not be the past in the future, and the future may not belong to the present past. Cause is effect, and effect is cause. Time is not set in stone, Tucker. There are many paths the future may take, some more desirable than others, but the future must take _some_ path. I do not control it. I can only try to coax it to grow the direction that is best, as a gardener tends a plant, though he cannot make it grow beyond trying to provide the right conditions."

"Then make it grow another direction! Keep Daniel from whatever is about to happen to him."

"Would you have me erase Daniel from existence entirely?"

Tucker was struck silent a moment with horror. "That can't be the only way."

"What is and is to come is an effect and a cause of what has been. They are reciprocal. Remove the one, and you remove the other. Take away one side of the scale, and the other falls. Daniel's fate is the balance to who he is, who he was. He can only become the symmetry of his own beginning. To do otherwise would tear him from the fabric of time."

_Who he was... his own beginning... _Realization gripped the dark man, with a shiver and chill like the tingle of passing through a threshold into the ocean's heavy, cold grip. "You know who Daniel was," Tucker breathed, "before he died." The ghost gave neither a gesture nor word of denial or assent, and his silence told Lancer the boy was right – there was no need for Clockwork to affirm what Tucker already knew to be true.

Lancer's voice shook, the words, asking what should never be known, inviting such a grotesque perversion of nature that Lancer wished he could hold them back even as they slipped from his mouth. "Who was he?"

"I cannot reveal that; but it would tell you nothing anyhow. It is not a question of who Daniel is."

Lancer stared at Clockwork in complete befuddlement, and could make nothing of the man's words. But an inkling trickled through the coils of Tucker's mind, for he had seen what the governor had not: Daniel's unbridled, unnatural passion; his fixation on the living world; the way he would forget his own powers; the strange, subtle change in his form Tucker had seen in the cave. "It's _what_," Tucker whispered, the terrible words falling into syncopation with the tocs of the gears. "_What_ is he?"

Clockwork smiled thinly. "Yes."

"He's not a Reborn, is he?"

"He is, but only just."

Lancer lifted from the floor in agitation, looking back and forth between the two men, his form quavering. His incredulous gaze finally settled on Clockwork. "You're mad!" he exclaimed. But Tucker made no sound of agreement, and Lancer glanced back at him to find a disturbing expression of misery and certainty had fallen over his countenance, as if Clockwork had only confirmed something the prince's friend had long suspected, and finally knowing for sure was almost a relief. "You're both mad! I was outside the room with his father when the prince was reborn! He could not be anything else!"

"Couldn't he?" Clockwork posed.

"What do you mean?" Lancer spat sharply.

"What is a Reborn?"

"Someone who died young," Tucker supplied, "before they had lived long enough to become either good or evil."

"That is the common belief," Clockwork said, "but it is not quite right. Those who cross over are not necessarily good, and rarely are Rogues evil by nature, though they might be destructive and dangerous. But though which they become might be more complex that it would first appear, you are right in that no soul which has become moral or immoral can be reborn. For there is something which all souls must have attained before they can become either – self awareness."

"I don't understand," Lancer said.

Clockwork smiled, happy to have a chance to play the philosopher (and maybe to play with Lancer's head, who so prided himself on being the court intellectual). "Can you be moral without being self aware?" the time ghost posed. "To be moral is to chose to act rightly; but to do so one must have an understanding of oneself in relation to others and the world, or there can be no knowledge of right and wrong. Self awareness comes at different times for everyone – for some at the age of three or four, for others not until perhaps seven or even later, and awareness deepens as one matures and becomes engaged in a broader world. It is no different for Reborns than it is for humans – an infant does not know itself, and cannot make moral choices until the child has become aware of itself as an independent entity in the world able to affect others. The difference is that the Ghost Realm is stagnant. The absence of the body means an absence of bodily needs, and therefore of much suffering and pleasure. Thus there are few opportunities to act morally, and it takes souls far longer to become either good or evil."

"And that is when we finally cross over?" Tucker asked, beginning to comprehend.

"Yes."

"But what has this to do with the prince?" Lancer snapped.

"It is the measure of one's self-awareness which determines the shape and fate of one's soul. Death found Daniel in the very moment of epiphany. Indeed, it was the very manner of his death which forced upon him the understanding of who he was and his place in the world. Had he lived even a moment longer and had reacted to the situation with a single thought or movement of intent, he might have crossed over. But he only had time enough to realize the reality of himself, a second and nothing more. Death caught him between self-awareness and morality, and though he was no longer wholly innocent, he was not yet good or evil and could only be reborn."

"But he's not a true Reborn, then," said Tucker resignedly.

"No. He had already in that instant begun to be shaped. His soul remembers the living world, even if his mind does not. That is the reason for his fascination with the other realm. And he _must_ be allowed to pursue his fixation. That is why I pulled you out, so that you could not stop him. Daniel's soul must follow its own impetus to completion. The choice of how to react to his reality which would have made him either good or evil is the symmetry to the epiphany of self-awareness. That decision has been postponed for almost twenty years. What happens tonight – what we must _hope_ happens tonight – is the beginning of that evolution which should have followed the moment after the loss of innocence, which _must_ follow as a course."

"What would have happened if we stopped him?" Lancer asked nervously.

Clockwork turned a serious gaze on the bald man. "War," he answered gravely. "Famine. Epidemics. Thousands of lives lost or prevented in the near now, _millions_ in the time to come."

The men's eyes widened in alarm. They had been expecting an answer relating to the prince, not to the living realm. _How could Daniel's soul be so tied up in the fate of the other world?_ Lancer wondered with a shudder.

"And to Danny?" Tucker pressed with a thin voice, as if he could hardly force himself to ask.

Clockwork grimaced. "What happens to all souls who cannot attain symmetry."

Lancer's brow furrowed in confusion, but Tucker paled as the pieces fell into place. "He'd become a Rogue..." he whispered. Lancer glanced at him in horror, and Clockwork nodded.

"You are right to accuse me of leading Daniel into this, of encouraging his fixation. But it has only ever been an effort to prevent that other, more likely fate."

Tucker blinked, as if waking from one nightmare into another. "But then who will rule? Whether Daniel follows his obsession or becomes a Rogue, either way the Ghost Realm will be without a future king. What about the fate of the people _here_?"

Clockwork smiled somewhere between sympathy and amusement. "There will be a king. But he is not someone you will ever bow to."

Tucker shrank for a moment with the sudden empathy of how it must feel to be a mouse before a cat, at the mercy of a creature so much bigger and more powerful that the lives it beheld were of no significance except as passing entertainment, and that if it prolonged the life it held by the tail, it was only to prolong it's own game. But at this thought, of every ghoul in the realm helpless to be nothing more than Clockwork's play things, white hot anger flashed through him, turning his fear to ash. "Who? Who is it? What is going to happen?"

Clockwork opened his mouth to reply, but before he had said a word his expression flittered, his eyes for a moment distant and glassy. When he blinked, his gaze returned to Tucker and he smiled again, if this time a little forced. "It has begun," he told them, and turned to his lenses. "Go. Go back to the castle and wait for Daniel. He will return to you yet. I know you do not like to be here."

The dark man hovered a moment, torn between worry for his friend and wanting to press Clockwork for answers. Lancer drifted over to him and pulled on his arm. "Let's get out of here," the governor urged warily. Tucker let the man begin to tow him along, but then stopped and turned back.

"What of the Ghost Realm?" he asked again. "Are the people in danger?"

Clockwork looked down at him solemnly. "There is danger, yes. A threat to the realm."

Tucker's breath quickened. "Have you told Daniel?"

"Daniel must not be told," Clockwork said sternly. "He would follow the wrong path, and become more of a threat himself than what you face now."

"But... What is the threat? Tell me!"

"I cannot," the old ghost replied. "I can only tell you that when it is over, a new king shall sit on the throne." Clockwork was silent a moment, letting Tucker absorb the dire prophecy; but the young man seemed to have realized he would get no more out of Clockwork, and remained silent.

"Come," Lancer whispered, tugging again on Tucker's sleeve. "Come on."

Reluctantly, the boy turned and followed the governor out of the hall, only pausing at the door to glance back at the ghost behind them. Clockwork heard the main doors in the foyer creak open, then shut with a hollow thud.

Clockwork tightened his grip on his staff. "It has indeed begun."

* * *

* **Oration on the Dignity of Man - **a humanist philosophical work by Pico della Mirandola from 1486. Just a play on words - falling flat on your face isn't very dignified, so it's kind of like him exclaiming, "Oh, my poor dignity!" ;)

**A/N:** I have been trying to get my writing up to a skill level that might be publishable, and tried a different technique for writing this chapter that I think worked much more smoothly than how I have worked on previous chapters. But I need to know if it makes a difference for you as the audience, if _you_ see an improvement. **So R&R! **Please tell me what you think! Your critiques really help.

Thanks!

~ The Author


	9. Revelations

**A/N 1: **Finally, the chapter you've all been begging for! Danny finally meets Sam! I'm not totally happy with this chapter (when am I ever?) – I really had to do some fancy footwork with Danny's psychology in the first few pages to take the character from where I had him originally to what I'm planning to do with him. And there's no action whatsoever. Blargh. I tried to make the insight into the characters compelling instead. But I feel like the language flows very well, so it shouldn't drag along. And if I sweat any more blood over this chapter, I'm going to die, so I hope you like it AND PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW AND TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! :) I LIVE FOR ENTHRALLING YOU! 3 *hugs*

**A/N 2: **If you think about all of the vulnerability, the insecurity, and the turmoil many people go through when falling in love, I can't imagine love at first sight is really all that pleasant. At least in a relationship, the vulnerability is soothed by reconfirming your feelings for one another. But love at first sight with a stranger, I would think, wouldn't really feel like love at all.

* * *

_**~ Previously ~**_

"You will know what is right."

Daniel lifted his head and looked at Clockwork, comprehension trickling over him. Coming from the master of time, such a comment could never be just rhetorical, for the sake of comfort alone, the prince realized. And, indeed, there was a knowing gleam in Clockwork's eyes.

"When?" Daniel asked suspiciously. "When will I know? What's going to happen?"

"That," Clockwork answered with a faint smirk, "is up to you."

Daniel straightened, epiphany pressing upon him as the time ghost began to drift away from him toward the main deck. "Wait, you could have stopped me! Why did you let me come here?" he demanded, following him.

Clockwork smiled, and began to fade out, his last words purling around Daniel on the wind. "Because it's time…"

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

**~ Revelations ~**

Daniel stood in the middle of the deck and stared in bewilderment at the place where the time ghost had vanished. His gut twisted in rush of trepidation. "Time for what?" he called after the man. There was no answer. The prince wheeled, lifting his head and shouting up at the air around him in a vain hope that maybe the specter had only turned invisible. "TIME FOR WHAT?" The fury in his voice broke on a note of desperation, the command crumbling into supplication.

But Clockwork did not reappear. There was nothing but the cracking of the sails as they pulled against their bonds, the whistling moan of the wind, and, from below, the murmur of the ocean against the ship, like an old man's rattling sighs.

The music, Daniel realized, had stopped.

The silence that rose in its place was hollow and barren, as if Clockwork had swept up every living thing in his departure. Even the men on the rigging had descended or disappeared behind the sails, leaving the ropes to creak like puppet strings pulled by an invisible hand. For a moment, the isolation rushed in upon Daniel, the vast emptiness twining around him until it plucked at his skin with cold, invisible hands, and his breath quickened in his enshrouding dread, the instinct for air real for all that his need for it was not.

Though he knew the men must be only out of sight and that Tucker and Lancer and a threshold were not far, for one terrible moment he felt that every illusion veiling the world had been ripped away and that this, _this_ was reality: that he was utterly, completely alone, stranded between the worlds.

His rational mind railed against the terror. Of _course_ it was not true. A sail rippled with the heave of some deck man below and caved to the wind. The wood creaked as the prow turned slightly. Wheel and rope both moved only under the hands of men.

_But it is true_. The thought rose unbidden, the talons of terror only sinking more firmly into his soul even as the absurd impression passed away. And was it not? He was dead, yet drawn inexorably to the living realm till his own death seemed some dream he could tear himself awake from if only he could remember how. Tucker knew of his obsession, and now Lancer as well. But however much Tucker said he understood, the prince knew that if their places had been reversed, his friend would have been persuaded by Lancer's idea of greatness – not out of any desire for it glory, but out of that sense of duty Daniel knew he should himself be commanded by. A chill, like ice crystallizing in his veins, cascaded through his form, the unwelcome recognition forcing itself upon his awareness that it was probably only that same sense of duty, and perhaps some lingering boyish loyalty to a childhood friend that had kept Tucker by his side thus far. For how could Tucker understand the grip this consuming desire had on Daniel's soul when he did not want it for himself?

Then there was Lancer. The old man surely thought Daniel must be bordering on mad. It could only be the novelty of the revelation which kept Lancer from apprehending the severity of Daniel's subservience to this fervored fascination. He still thought the prince might yet be persuaded from it. But every atom of his being reviled the thought of any such attempt. What happened when the governor realized he could not divorce Daniel from his course?

_Nothing_, Daniel realized with sudden certainty_, which is not already inevitable._ Lancer would have to go to the king, and his father...

His father would cast him off. It would be as if Daniel had never been his son at all. Daniel searched himself for some sense of shock or dismay, but the surprise was not there. He had known for a while, he realized. He had known the consequences, that it would come to this. And there could be no great grief, he felt, in losing his father's respect or love. He did not truly have it now, when his father was an enemy he had to hide everything from. Already, he found he loved his father with more of a sense of nostalgia than anything else.

And after he left his father's house and name, exiled as a traitor, he could shelter in his cavern and spend his afterlife traversing the threshold there as he pleased, pouring over artifacts of the other realm, perhaps even able to make journeys of several days, or to leave the ghost realm and simply never come back.

But there was no joy or relief in the prospect, as he had expected, only cold fear. For he could never be among men and be seen. It would eternally be thus: that he would be dead among the living, or trying in vain to live among the dead, forced to hide and hated wherever he was.

It was only now, in the moment that reality stood disrobed of its glamor and revealed its true nature that the years of delusion, of pretending this would all somehow end differently, were pulled away and Daniel could admit to himself what he had surely begun to recognize long ago.

That he had always been, and would always be, between worlds, alone.

A tenuous quivering rose from beneath the wind, at first felt more than heard, so diaphanous that it might have been the croons and trills of the air coalescing for a moment into a single voice. Yet the sound did not fade with the change of the breeze, but swelled into a tone of such ecstasy and pain that Daniel was not sure whether it came from without or within. It floated for a breath before tumbling into a coruscation of notes that finally alighted on a higher timbre of such pure desolation that it tore the terror from beneath his skin, revealing a shattering anguish he had thought he didn't feel.

But it was grief for the world never had, not for the world lost.

He stood trembling, burning with despair as the quavering sounds of the bowed instrument, singing alone, drifted over the rail of the stern castle and washed through him, and he buried his face in his hands, his fingers curling into his hair. The inexplicable feeling of homesickness which he had felt before Clockwork's appearance seized him again ten fold, and with it a rage at Clockwork's toying words. _You are not different from them._ What empty words! What was the ghost's reason to dangle such a cruel, false hope before him, taunting him with what he knew could never be true? He would never know what it was to stand among them, to listen to such music openly and know what it meant, what beauty and suffering inspired it. He would never feel the thread of blood through his form, the quiet driving rhythm of a heart in his breast. He had already been ripped from that.

How could watching from this silent, unseen perch for a century, two, four, ever be enough? How could it do anything but rip this wound open further each time?

Lancer's words echoed in his mind. _You're dead... It may not be what you want, but sometimes the greatest thing we can do is be our best at what fate has allotted us._

Greatness. That was his mistake, wasn't it? This world had seduced him with the chimera of it, the glory of becoming something more than you were, or creating something beyond yourself. But greatness required a death to defy. Death had come for him before he was old enough to know what it was, and he would never have another. No matter how much he knew of living, life would always be out of his reach, and greatness with it. He might as well have been grasping at smoke.

But Lancer's mistake was just as grievous, for there was no greatness in the absence of strife. Greatness, glory... it was all folly now.

There was only afterlife, the antithesis to life in every respect: a vapid existence with no end in sight, except at the mercy of some unseen day when the weight of his soul at last pulled him from this world into the next.

That was the only possible end of it.

Daniel turned and stumbled blindly to the railing, turning tangible and lowering his forehead to the cool, leathery wood. Cold mist thrown up by the roiling wake caressed the tips of the fingers he dangled over the edge. The throne he had been so ready to forsake floated against the blackness of his eyelids, the cradle of its seat seeming to draw him with some spectral force. The inevitability of his fate thrust itself upon him – for even if he abdicated his crown and wandered between the worlds for centuries, he was still bound by his very death to everything that cursed chair represented: the enduring static history of the Ghost Realm, the separation of the worlds, and with it this senseless cold war.

Unless...

_It is time._

Daniel lifted his head and stared out at tattered reflections of the emerging stars without truly seeing. His mind raced. He had come with the intent of discovering whether Skulker had been lying, whether humans could really rekill ghosts. Clockwork had known that, and hadn't stopped him.

_What is going to happen?_

_That is up to you._

The realization came over him like passing through a threshold into the crystalline sea. Even before the war had started,few ghosts had crossed regularly into the living realm, and those who had visited had usually gone on diplomatic missions, their contact with humans limited to those whose summons they had answered. Most couldn't fathom the beauty of a world they had not lived long enough to experience. Only Rogues regularly broke into the living world and went among the living, drawn by whatever had kept them from crossing over in the first place and blind to all else.

He was the only Reborn with any real knowledge of this other world. Even his father shunned any ken of it, sickened with hate by the merest mention of the Earth. And now Daniel understood why – his father blamed humans for the loss of his wife.

But he was the prince. And even if his father would not listen, Daniel could sway the court, cornering his father, if he just had the proof that the abduction of the queen could not have happened as told and that the real threat lay in the direction of whoever Skulker had lied for.

He was the only one who could end this war.

And it suddenly broke through his thoughts that there was only one way to test his conviction.

He had to show himself.

Daniel reeled at the idea. For all his desire to be down there among them, the thought of actually doing it filled him with as much agony as not doing it at all. He had seen their Death, the demons and reapers and psychopomps they portrayed with such a passion of fascination and fear. If they saw him, oh... how they would draw back from him in terror!

But they would not be able to touch him. Not if Skulker had lied. Not if Clockwork was right that there was no power in one world that could annihilate a being of the other.

_War is always a lie, because it can only stand on the conviction that the side you're fighting is an other that is unfathomable to you, so unlike you as to be a threat in its very existence. _

They would fear him, but in that moment before panic set in, maybe there was something he could say or do to stay them, to make them listen... And maybe being on the ship would buy him extra time to pacify them and assure them he meant no harm, for there was nowhere for them to go.

Daniel started to let go of the railing and found his hands shaking, and he quickly grabbed the wood again to still them, energy rushing beneath his skin. Was he really thinking of doing this? If he showed himself, there was no going back. He might only have one chance at this. If he was wrong, if he didn't find his proof tonight, it could throw the whole whole war into flame if his appearance was taken as an act of aggression instead of peace.

Was this really what Clockwork had been alluding to?

_You will know what is right... It's time..._

He was not certain he was right at all. But this war would never end so long as neither side made the first attempt to break the silence. Humans could not easily reach the ghost realm – most thresholds were underwater, and they would be risking death without some way to fly. It had to be someone from the his own kind.

And it would only ever be him.

After tonight, the guards would know he wasn't to leave the palace grounds, and he didn't know when he would have another opportunity to cross the threshold again. No, it had to be now.

With a deep breath, he pushed down the wild thrum of energy pulsing within him and turned himself intangible. His hands still trembled, but he forced himself to straighten, falling almost unconsciously into the regal posture that had been drilled into him as a default, meant to give away nothing of what he felt. Turning, he started for the stairs, watching the steps he took with a strange detachment as if something were compelling him to walk when he might not have been able to on his own. But he gave himself over to it, grateful he at least didn't have to find the strength for this, and summoning his self-control lifted his head -

And stopped dead.

There at the head of the stairs, barring the way to the deck below, was an angel, her black cloak swirling in the wind, and Daniel stood paralyzed, his momentary flash of fear succumbing to awe. Never had he seen any spirit so ethereal. She was delicate, as dark as she was radiant. Her ivory skin rivaled the moonlight, and the hair that fell about her shoulders could have given the night its color. Her manifestation was so clear that she couldn't possibly have been a ghost. No aura of energy haloed her, but was contained entirely within her form, shimmering beneath her translucent skin. And he felt his soul gripped by her sublime power, her gaze upon him alone greater than all his will, and suddenly he could no longer hear the music or the men or the wind, or feel the rocking of the ship beneath his feet, as if she had silenced the world and stilled the earth.

He knew he should be afraid. Only the oldest ghosts had ever seen angels, their stories of the ancient battles the sole description of them anyone had anymore – creatures of unearthly wonder and terror, their appearance a harbinger of impending destruction and supernal war. The celestial spirits had not left their realm in a thousand years. But here was one before him, walking toward him with steps that hardly touched the wood. Yet as she held him in her gaze, he found fear beyond his reach. All Daniel could feel was surrender. He had never felt more vulnerable and exposed than he did now, as though his entire soul were laid open to her, but the idea of resisting her unraveled before it was complete. She could have taken his soul and more. Even as she continued towards him, all the emptiness, anger, and bitter longing rose at her silent summoning from the deepest corners of his being, transmuting into completion and rapture and an unspeakable need so deep he thought it would sunder him in half.

He felt like he was dissolving and being formed all at once, and with a strange indifference he wondered if he were crossing over, if she had come to stop him and was forcing him into the next world, and this silence and breathlessness and agonizing ecstasy were redeath coming over him. Yet a gentle smile graced her lips, and her eyes were full of tenderness and empathy, as if she knew his entire heart and understood, and she was close enough now that he could see they were the color of the last amethyst light on the edge of the horizon-

-and her cheeks, stained faintly rose by the wind.

The world fell out from underneath him.

_Oh god... She's human, she's __alive__..._

And she was looking at him.

He tried to breathe and couldn't. He didn't wonder whether he had turned visible on accident or whether it was Clockwork who had revealed him. He didn't care. The way she was looking at him, it didn't matter, and he couldn't tear his eyes from hers. Sensations flooded through him, fear and impossible warmth and gravity, as though her very gaze could make him flesh, and he thought that if this ecstasy wasn't death, it must be life.

She reached out her hand to him, and his own came up of it's own volition, as if commanded by her, leaving him only able to watch in euphoria and dread both as the space between them closed. For a moment, their fingers brushed, and a great tremor passed through him, like something starting to life within, and he was afraid he had burst into light. But her gaze did not change. He tried desperately to clasp her hand -

- and it fell through his fingers like velvet ash.

And she stepped up to him, and through.

Astonished, he spun to see her step up to the railing where he had stood only a minute before, laying her hand upon it lightly and gazing up at the sky with the same seraphic expression he had thought was for him. There was no trace she knew she had walked through him. She only shivered, pulling her cloak tighter about her, and mistook him for a flourish of the wind.

She had never seen him at all.

_No..._

The grief that crashed over him almost doubled him over, sound and movement rushing back at him too loud and violent. A gasp ripped itself from his throat, his chest convulsing, seizing, as if he were drawing his first breath. Only the fear that if he looked away from her for a second she would disappear kept him upright. For a moment he had thought she beheld him, and he had felt every discordant piece of his soul brought to whole. The shattering of the illusion ripped him apart again with such violence he felt as though she had really pulled his soul from him as she passed through, leaving a gaping, bottomless hollow within.

"No... Look at me." The whispered plea left his lips before he could stop it. She turned her head at the half heard words, thinking it an illusion of the wind, and for a moment a swell of need extinguished his reservation. "Look at me..."

His voice seemed to have abandoned him, and the words were no more than a breath. Yet she was more certain now she had heard something, and she turned full around, her brow rivelled and lips parted in confusion as she looked in the direction of the sound.

But of course she could not see him, her eyes only looking through where his heart would have been if he were a man, for he remained invisible and intangible. He opened his mouth, but words would not come, and he found himself suspended between longing and terror, unable to do anything but stare at her in captivation.

Did humans really look like this? She was like no woman in any of the paintings he had ever seen. They were always solid and earthy, with warm, rosy skin, fair hair, and round, lush bodies brimming with life. The woman before him seemed another creature entirely, pale and dark and cold, and her very essence so fragile that she might turn to mist in the wind and be eddied away. It was no wonder he had first thought her made of light. This close, with barely a hand's width between them, he knew it must be the reflection of the starlight that moved across her skin, not some energy from within, but the illusion remained. A shiver traced his spine to imagine how much more empyreal the effect would be in the full light of the sun. He was stunned to realize just how slight she was – the top of her head barely reached his chin – and her clothes, he noticed now, were dirty and ripped. But she exuded an unquestionable aura of power and an unspeakable elegance that he could attribute to nothing but the sheer force of her person, and he wondered why he had never seen anyone capture beauty like hers. All the women in the paintings draped in silk and gold couldn't hold a candle to her grace.

And a strange feeling came over him that he was standing outside of himself completely, that his soul had passed from him and lay hidden within her now, ensnared behind the eyes that searched through him in perplexity. Or maybe it was that the illusion of her eyes meeting his had for a moment made him feel as if death had never come for him, and his whole afterlife had been a passing fantasy lived in an instant, his life briefly forgotten in the imagining until her hand had touched his, pulling him back to himself. For that split second, he had almost known who he was...

But there was nothing to remember, no other life, and Daniel felt thin as smoke, more dream than dead, as though he might fade out into nothing if she did not look at him and make him real again.

The desperation aching within him was almost enough to make him throw off his invisibility and appear to her, and at the same time to make him turn and fly from here as fast as he might be able, for he immediately imagined the horror in her eyes, how she would step back in fear and revulsion, and he couldn't bear for her to look at him like that.

But wasn't this what he had intended? To reveal himself? To find out whether they could rekill him? It would be better, safer, to show himself to just one person, rather than stepping into the midst of the throng on the deck below. Alone with her, maybe he'd be able to stall her long enough to assuage her terror...

His breath was so ragged, he was sure she had to hear it. He tried to think of something to reassuring to say, but his tongue lie mute in his mouth. With trembling fingers, he began to reach for her hand instead, intangibility and invisibility already sliding off of him as if they were being pulled into the well of her gravity, following where the other part of him had already gone, and briefly it flashed across his mind that when he touched her, the last of him would follow too, and he would cease to be anything separate from her...

But before he could give himself away, her expression suddenly shifted and a smile broke out across her face. He stopped short, and without warning she stepped through him again, a brief sensation of dizzying warmth that stole his breath.

"Maddie..."

Her voice... That had been her voice behind him, dark and misty, somehow intimate and regal all at once. The sound pulled at something deep within him, and he turned as soon as the world had righted itself. She was walking towards another woman who had come up the stairs, and Daniel watched in curiosity as she threw her arms around her eagerly.

If the first woman had been everything Daniel had never imagined of a human, the second woman, Maddie, was everything he had. She seemed earthly, of the world in a way the other woman was not, and her beauty was warm. She might have been a model for one of the paintings he had studied, or could have been in her youth, for she was older by some twenty years or more. There were fine lines around her mouth and in the corners of her eyes, and silver shot through her auburn hair which was pulled up into an intricate arrangement that seemed impervious to the wind. Her movements were poised and graceful, and her dress was made of fine azure silk and black lace, and a velvet black cloak was draped over her shoulders, making the other woman's clothes look all the more drab and shabby by comparison. But somehow her elegance remained superficial, almost mechanical like a force of habit, and dim next to the ethereal aura of the young woman she embraced. It seemed to weigh on her, a conscious effort that made the lines in her face more pronounced. But beneath the forced dignity, there was something palpably tender, almost maternal about her that shone through as the younger woman straightened and Maddie brushed her cheek with a hand.

"What's it is? You looked frightened for a moment."

The young woman smiled bashfully. "I thought I heard something. I spent too long listening to old Gino's ghost stories, I think."

Daniel's stomach dropped. Ghost stories? What could she have heard? He had a bad feeling they would all be about Rogues, insane and obsessive, and with no regard for the boundary between worlds. Who else could humans have met with? What chance did he have if she was already afraid of him? If they were _all_ afraid?

Madeline huffed in exasperation. "I told you not to listen to him. It's all nonsense. He made up half of it on the spot just to keep you sweeping the deck," she said conspiratorially. "There is no such thing as ghosts. Just forget the whole tale."

Daniel couldn't decide if this statement was an improvement, or another step back. Maddie seemed to have no fear at the idea of ghosts... but then, she didn't seem to think they existed at all, and the prince's mind raced. She couldn't possibly be aware of the war if she thought the other world didn't even exist... But then, he hadn't known of the war either until today. Would anyone on this ship? That could prove problematic...

"I know, but it's so fascinating." She was almost glowing with barely contained curiosity, and her eyes glazed for a moment as her imagination raced. "I mean, all the sailors have ghost stories. There must be _something_ behind it."

"Drink," Madeline answered wryly, and the woman laughed and kissed her cheek.

"Thank you for today. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present."

"There is one more thing," Madeline said with a sly smile. From beneath her cloak she pulled out a long, thin wooden box which she had tucked under her other arm and held it out to her. The young woman looked at her in wonder for a moment before taking it almost reverently and kneeling on the deck to open it.

Daniel crept a couple steps closer to get a better look. The wooden box had been painted ebony, and was edged with engraved silver, with latches at either end. She ran her fingers over the delicate metalwork, then set it down before her and lifted the lid.

And gasped. Inside was a sword nestled in a lining of black silk. The groove down the center of the gleaming blade was engraved with scroll work that matched that on the outside of the box, and the black hilt was inlaid with silver vines sprouting laurel leaves and cinquefoils blossoming like stars in mother-of-pearl. A black leather belt and scabbard with a silver tip lay beside it.

"It's beautiful," she breathed.

Madeline urged her, "Try it." She glanced up at her, then lifted the sword out of its bed. Standing, she wrapped her hands around the grip, letting it settle in her hands, and hefted it a couple times, testing its weight. An expression of utter focus fell over her features and she took a couple steps back before lifting the weapon and executing a series of resplendent maneuvers. Daniel watched, stunned at the beauty of her movements. He hadn't thought women used swords, but she was as fluid as if the sword were a natural part of her body, as if the gravity of this world had no hold on her, and moved with a precision of balance that seemed impossible on the rocking deck. The metal sang a high, sweet tone as it whipped through the air, until she finally brought it down one last time and fell still, gazing down the length of the blade in rapture. Almost lovingly, she brought the hilt up again to examine it, her fingers tracing over the design.

"It's perfect," she murmured.

"I had it commissioned myself. The laurel is for victory. The flowers are for hope and joy. ...It was to be a wedding present, but I realized you'll probably travel to your betrothed's land for the ceremony, and I won't be there to present it. Besides, this way you can hide it in your packing and your parents won't know." She aimed for a light tone, but there was an underlying quavering of misery that gave her away completely.

For a moment, Daniel thought the ship had dipped violently beneath him, and his stomach gave a sickening twist. _Wedding? She's betrothed?_

A similarly ill expression stole over the woman's face, and for a second Daniel wondered if the ship really had rolled. But no one stumbled for their footing, and the deck only bobbed steadily beneath them. The afflicted look vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by a closed, unreadable countenance. She lowered the sword, the reflection of the moon sliding off of it like a drop of milk. Madeline wrapped an arm around herself and pressed her other hand to her mouth, forbidding herself the tears that leapt to her eyes. How could she have been so foolish to bring it up? ...But as the act of speaking was impossible without air, so too did it seem it had become impossible to speak without mention of the wedding. It was the backdrop of everything these days. The joy of the day could not have lasted forever.

Without looking at Madeline, the darker woman went back to the box lying in the middle of the deck and pulled out the scabbard and belt and threaded it around her hips, fastening the belt with a clipped efficiency that belied nothing of what was behind the careful mask. Retrieving the sword, she slipped it into its sheath, the blade sliding home with a cold _shiiiing_.

She examined the pommel silently for a moment, fingering it absently. "Do you know who they have chosen?" she asked, her voice devoid of any tone.

Madeline took a shaky breath and lowered her hand, letting it fall over her heart. "No," she answered.

The young woman turned away from the box and walked past Daniel to the railing. She leaned her arms on it and gazed out at the blackening horizon. Madeline followed, but was reluctant to join her, afraid to intrude upon her careful dispassion. She hovered beside Daniel instead, unaware of him. The woman spoke. "I've overheard my father discussing two potential alliances near France, one to the east and one to the south."

"Yes," Madeline acknowledged. "The duchy of Lorraine and the kingdom of Navarre."

Standing behind her, Madeline could not see the woman's face. But Daniel could, and for a moment he thought she had forgotten how to breathe. Her already ivory skin turned ashen, and her fingers dug into the wood. "Lorraine... Navarre... They're so far away," she whispered almost to herself, a note of despair creeping in. But her mind caught on something, and she turned and looked at Madeline searchingly. "What advantage does my father think could be had by allying Amity with such distant lands?"

"The king believes he could secure trade with France through Lorraine. Or with England and Castile through Navarre."

Cold shock raced down Daniel's spine. _The king... her father... _He recognized the names, too, of the kingdoms Maddie had said from the maps in his cavern. _And her marriage is to be arranged with one of them..._

His eyes snapped to the woman at the railing in disbelief. The woman he had thought had seen him, the woman he had almost revealed himself to...

_She's the princess!_

Her clothing had not given it away before, but he realized now her bearing should have given him some hint of her rank. He shivered and stared at her in disbelief. This was who he was supposed to be at war with. This was the daughter of the man who was supposed to have captured his mother and rekilled her soldiers. A daughter of the family that was the target of all his own father's hate and rage.

...But his mind skipped back to the beginning of their conversation. Maddie could not know about the war if she didn't believe in ghosts. And the princess had given no hint of knowing either...

Could she be pretending? Was it possible the war was as secret in this world as it was in his own?

His mind fumbled in amazement. He had come to discover if Skulker had been leading them all astray for twenty years, and here before him was one of the few people who could tell him the truth!

_It is time..._

Clockwork would have known exactly on whose ship the prince had landed. Was this what he had been alluding to?

...But suddenly Daniel didn't want to know. Even if Skulker had been lying, the princess had spent the day enthralled by ghost stories, stories that had left her skittish and afraid of voices in the wind. Even if there was no war, he realized, he was still her enemy. He would rather have her believe forever that he wasn't real than to look upon him with hatred. Grief shuddered through him. The very thing he had come to find out now seemed the most certain thing, and the most repulsive. For how could _she_ ever be his enemy? Everything in him rose up in denial of it. The sense that some part of his soul was hidden within her persisted even now, with a certainty that permeated his entire form. To even ask her would be to doubt her, to betray her in some way... and with her, himself.

The conversation continued, oblivious to his revelation and turmoil, and he struggled to draw himself back to it.

"But there's no tactical advantage," the princess reasoned, gesturing in frustration, "and not much chance of a political advantage. Neither kingdom could send troops in case of war, not from that distance! He might be able to improve trade moderately, but he would have to tax the people even more than he already is to meet as equals with France or England. If they're forced to pay anymore, they'll starve! More than they are already," she bit out.

Madeline hesitated. "I think that is what would would happen."

"It's not tenable," the princess murmured, half to herself. Her head turned to look out across the ocean, as if she could read answers on the foam. After a moment, her eyes flicked back to the older woman, pinning her with a gaze that demanded answers. "I don't understand why he does not make an alliance with one of the neighboring kingdoms. Venento, or Toscana, or with a duke in Corsica if he wants an alliance with France!"

Her gaze would have made any of his father's advisers stutter and fumble for any explanation they could provide for fear of displeasing her, but Maddie seemed immune. She merely shook her head, sharing the princess' confusion. "I don't know. They've never been explicit enemies, but they've never been willing to ally themselves with your father either. I've never quite understood why."

"But if he does not marry me to one of the neighboring kingdoms, who will succeed him? There is no heir, except whomever I marry. Lorraine and Navarre cannot combine with Amity, and they certainly don't have the resources to govern from so far away." A hint of bitterness and defeat slipped into her voice. "You would think my father and his advisers would have the sense to use me to some better advantage."

Madeline looked grief-stricken, and a simmering anger flared within Daniel's chest. "You talk about it as if it doesn't matter what happens to you," she said quietly, and the princess looked away again. "Doesn't it bother you that you probably won't meet your husband till the wedding?"

"No," she stated. "This is my duty. It's what I was raised for."

But the words held no conviction behind them, and the young woman was looking out at the horizon instead of meeting Madeline's gaze, her eyes bright with gathering tears.

"Sam..."

The sound was like a shaft of ice through the fierce indignation Daniel found had himself possessed by, and for a moment his rage was swept away by a rapturous joy before he succumbed again to the terrible conversation.

_Sam... Her name is Sam..._

The princess turned away sharply, facing back out to the ocean, and Madeline's plea fell mute. She knew how hard Samantha was trying to be brave and accept the inevitable. Her heart threw itself against her chest with the ache to push the girl just a little farther, to call her out of her pretense and make her let the tears come so that she could comfort her.

But Sam had not let herself be comforted since she had been a little girl. Whatever majesty had been left unassumed by the absence of a son, the princess had always taken it upon herself. It was a man's dignity and a man's commanding presence that she pulled around herself, even now. Only Madeline, who had spent almost every waking minute of her life with her, knew the times when Sam was close to giving way.

But she had never let Samantha know, and now was not the time to start. The girl was doing what she needed to do to get through this, putting up a front for her parents, the advisers, the court – herself. The mask was all she had. Madeline could hold her tonight, but they would be separated soon, and if she forced the fragile mask to shatter, the princess would know herself to be completely powerless in a situation where it was the only protection she had.

Swallowing her own pain, Madeline reluctantly turned and started for the stairs. But after a single step, she paused, looking back, and said softly, "I only wish you could marry for love as well."

Samantha listened as her governess's footsteps tapped a hollow rhythm down the stairs, waiting for them to fade into the sounds from the deck below before she gave way to the despair and anger. She crumbled in on herself as if in agony, her fingers white as she clung to the railing as though it were her only hope, and hitched sob escaped her. The sound cut through Daniel, a flare of pain bursting through his chest as if he could feel her own, and he took a step towards her involuntarily before stopping himself, reluctant to violate the illusion that her grief was unseen. He knew he should leave her, but no part of him would obey. She clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling the sound.

_Not here_, she thought._ Not where someone could come up at any time._

She took a couple shaky breaths through her nose before she dared to take her hand from her lips and put it back on the railing. She pulled herself almost feebly upright, lest anyone come up to the stern castle and see that something was wrong. She couldn't bear to have that conversation twice. Not tonight.

It was the unexpectedness of it that had left her feelings so close to the surface, she surmised. In the activity of the day, everything had faded but the sheer rush of the wind and the ocean on which they skimmed, the steady bob and rise of the ship like a heartbeat that had drowned out everything else. With blue on every side and above and below, for a few glorious hours it had felt as though there were no other world.

Any other day, she would have expected the topic to come up, more than once, and her affectation of imperturbability would have been safely in place. But today she had truly forgotten – had _wanted_ to forget – and let herself.

_My mistake._ How many times had Captain Rinato told her, "Preparedness is half the battle"?

Samantha brushed away a niggle of irritation at Maddie. There was nothing sentimental or romantic about this marriage. It was entirely political, a contract in which she was the collateral. Her governess's understanding of politics was brilliant; it wasn't that she persisted in misunderstanding the nature of the princess's marriage. It was just that she wanted more for Samantha than her royal blood permitted.

_But I am marrying for love,_ Samantha thought in a belated retort. _The love of my people._ She would never rule. She could never order troops to protect the border lands or make decisions about distribution of the surplus harvest in winter. To wed and secure an alliance was the only duty she was allowed. Even if she would be separated from her people, from Amity, her marriage was for the benefit of the kingdom.

…_Except it looks like it won't be, _she thought morosely.

The feeling that her father was betraying her was impossible to shut out. She tried to have faith: he was a king, supported by his council of advisers. Surely the best political minds and the utmost care was being put into this decision, looking at it from every angle.

But she couldn't help but think her father was aiming too high. She would be thrown away on a marriage that would cede all the benefits to her husband's kingdom, and none to their own.

Then it would be over. She would have been used up, her one card played.

And not by her.

She looked out into the darkness and it felt like staring into the lonely, cold years that stretched out before her without even the comfort that her submission had done some good. A horrible urge clawed within her to shrink back from it, and not for the first time she thought of running away, abandoning her crown and disappearing. Maybe she could become a nun and join the abbey. She would have a chance there to serve her people still...

But the thoughts were fantasy. Wherever she might end up, there was a possibility she could do some good, and so long as that possibility existed, she had to take it. _Wait and see_.

The wind started to pick up, quickly turning to a gust that whipped her hair around her face. But it matched her mood, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head back, drinking deeply of it and savoring the bitter, sharp chill of the drops of salt water that hit her skin, biting like sparks.

Lorraine. Navarre. They were both landlocked. She might never see the ocean again.

That was really going to be the least of her worries, and Samantha felt silly, shamed for even thinking it. But somehow the prospect of being closed in, away from this endless horizon, seemed to capture the entire situation.

Daniel stood in indecision. All the things he had come to this ship to discover seemed to have fallen away in importance, distant and insignificant next to her grief. Somehow, the realization of who she was had cast the reality of the war away, instead of bringing it into focus. He only felt more connected to her, his fate mirrored in hers – bound by duty and blood to things they had no loyalty to, and no belief in.

But somehow his own situation seemed nothing next to hers. He was already dead. What did it matter if his existence should be purposeless? It wouldn't change his soul. But she was _alive_, and was being handled as if she wasn't, as if her life was a token, and, with it, her soul. She would be trapped, body, mind, and heart, into a life not of her own making, in which she was no more than a pawn to be moved around at other people's will, with no purpose of her own. The decision was being made for her as if she felt and experienced nothing, and she was trying to convince herself she didn't, denying herself anger and grief. The walls were closing in around her, and she knew it. Maddie knew it. And it filled him with horror. To condemn her to a life with no will, no purpose, was like condemning her to a living death.

He felt guiltily like he was intruding, seeing a part of her she had not meant for anyone to see. But at the same time a passion rose within him to exhort her to fight it, to turn her from the railing and deny to her everything she was trying to make herself believe, hell, to take her away from this and stand between her and her looming fate.

He was so close to her, he could have reached out and touched her. His fingers twitched with the desire.

But what she had said to Maddie about the ghost stories haunted him, and he felt too keenly his own nature.

Showing himself to her would be no comfort now.

A flash of light lit her face, and a low rumble sounded in the distance, followed by another. The music on the deck below faltered and fell into a silence heavy with dread. Sam opened her eyes and peered out into the night. Her lips parted in fear, her breath quickening, and Daniel followed her gaze. Out on the horizon, a roiling wall of cloud was swallowing the ocean behind them, underlit by a tangled web of lightning. Daniel stepped up beside Sam and stared out at it in awe and apprehension.

From far above, the lookout called, "Hurricane ahoy!"

* * *

**A/N:** I know I'm ending this chapter in the middle of a scene (again), but this chapter is now officially at 14 full pages single spaced – 24 if you count it as novel-sized pages. I think I'd better stop here!

I will update again as soon as I can. Now that I've found a better method for writing (I think), I should be able to do the fleshed-out, brain-spill outlines over my morning coffee, and then work on refining it into a chapter whenever I can grab a couple hours to write. Hopefully this will mean slightly more regular updates! :)

PLEASE REVIEW! They really are helping me to improve. :) And they're yummy. Nom nom nom.


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